As of September 1, Charleston International Airport and all CCAA owned buildings has come to be a smoke-free campus. This way that smoking and vaping of any type will now not be allowed interior or outside of the terminal. 🚭 p.c.twitter.com/HHwxQOTO3N
There are nonetheless a few airports across the u . s . a . that accommodate smoking inside the terminals.
According to the American Nonsmokers Rights Foundation, as of July 1, 2021, four of the top 35 US airports have smoking areas: McCarran International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, Washington Dulles Airport (IAD), TGIF at Miami International Airport (MIA), and Nashville International Airport (BNA).
Some smaller airports across the usa do have smoking spaces as properly. But now there is one much less airport where tourists can light up: Charleston International Airport (CHS).
The smoking ban at CHS is in impact as of Sept 1, 2021, and consists of all enclosed public areas, outside of the terminal, the shuttles, sidewalks, rest areas, in addition to public and employee parking masses.
What can’t you smoke? Cigarettes, cigars, pipes, vapes, puff bars, and any device that emits smoke or vapor that can be dangerous to tourists.
Why can’t you smoke? Because, consistent with a Centers for Disease Control take a look at, secondhand smoke travels from designated smoking regions into nonsmoking areas in airports, in which nonsmoking vacationers and employees can be uncovered.
What will occur to you in case you light up at Charleston International Airport (CHS)?
The Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department is enforcing the ban and all and sundry who does no longer observe the ban is issue to a excellent.
Charleston International Airport might be a hundred% smoke-unfastened as of September 1, 2021. This ban includes all enclosed public areas, outdoor of the terminal, shuttles, sidewalks, rest areas, public and worker parking plenty, and different Airport Authority buildings and facilities. p.c.twitter.com/CulnRYBWc2
In ATL, which has held the title of “World’s
Busiest Airport” for decades, there are presently about a dozen
put up-security areas in which people who smoke can mild up. The lounges were to start with
paid for by using Phillip Morris earlier of the 1996 summer season Olympics.
Although the
U.S. Surgeon General has decided that there may be no risk-unfastened level of
publicity to secondhand smoke, ATL officials have lengthy claimed the lounges benefited
non-people who smoke as well as people who smoke through retaining secondhand smoke away from
non-smoking visitors and by way of discouraging smokers from lights up in restrooms
and different spaces.
But due to the fact ATL is a part of the city of Atlanta, airport
officers say the airport will comply with the brand new ordinance and convert the
front room to different functions. Passengers will be directed to smoking regions out of doors
of both terminals.
“We plan to work with our airline partners
to ensure they talk with their clients that smoking is no longer
authorized at ATL,” said Jennifer Ogunsola, spokeswoman for Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta International Airport (ATL), “We additionally may have PSA [public service
announcements] messaging in the course of the airport as well as permanent and
digital signage with like messaging.”
ATL’s shift to smoke loose
is “huge,” stated Cynthia Hallett, president and CEO of Americans for Nonsmokers’
Rights (ANR) and the ANR Foundation, “As the airport with the most important passenger
volume and a large team of workers, each flight crews and airport group of workers, going smoke loose
means that hundreds of thousands of people might be fully blanketed from exposure to
secondhand smoke.”
Now, says Hallett, it’s
time for the handful of different U.S. airports that still have smoking lounges to
observe Atlanta’s lead. “Many airports have repurposed smoking lounges for an awful lot
desired spaces to sit down, which include electronic device charging stations or greater
food options,” she stated.
U.S. airports wherein
smoking continues to be allowed
In addition to ATL, a
handful of the us of a’s busiest airports nonetheless provide smoking lounges for
passengers, despite a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) displaying
that distinctive indoor smoking areas at airports are not effective in
doing away with secondhand smoke exposure.
Washington Dulles
International Airport (IAD) has smoking lounges in each concourse. “There is sufficient customer demand to keep their presence in
the airport and there are currently not any discussions to close them,” said
Christina Saull, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports
Authority.
All the restaurants and retail shops at Nashville International Airport Thursday, July 7, 2016 in Nashville, TN.
At Nashville International
Airport (BNA), there are in-shop smoking lounges at the Graycliff Cigar Company shops located on Concourse B, near
Gate B-10, and on Concourse C, close to Gate C-10. Passes to the living room are $5 for
one hundred twenty mins.
At Miami
International Airport (MIA), passengers are approved to smoke inside the open-air patio at TGI Friday’s at Gate D36. “Since it's miles already in an outdoor region, there
has now not been discussion approximately final it,” stated MIA spokesman Greg Chin.
McCarran, which has slot machines in lots of elements of airport,
has enclosed, especially ventilated on line casino gaming areas on each concourse wherein
passengers may also smoke.
“In the past, whilst
there have been no such areas, we skilled repeated issues in which vacationers
might smoke in restrooms, companion care rooms or different public areas,” said Chris
Jones, spokesman for the Clark County Department of Aviation, “ We’d get
court cases from parents who might enter the sort of room to exchange their child’s
diaper and locate it packed with 2nd-hand smoke from a person who’d lit up
there minutes earlier, for instance.”
Passengers might additionally open
alarmed doorways in attempts to smoke on emergency go out stairways, Jones said.
Clearing the air in
airports
According to the CDC publicity to secondhand smoke has been
gradually reducing inside the United States, due primarily to the adoption of
smoke-unfastened policies prohibiting indoor smoking at worksites, restaurants and
bars.
“However, an envisioned fifty eight million, or 1 in four, Americans
stay uncovered to secondhand smoke in regions not included by means of those policies, inclusive of
certain airports,” said Brian King, deputy director for studies translation in
CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.
“The true information is that we understand what works to shield people
from this absolutely preventable fitness danger,” King introduced, “Implementing
smoke-loose regulations in indoor public areas is the satisfactory way to fully protect
anybody, together with airport tourists and employees, from the lethal dangers of
secondhand smoke publicity.”
The debate over airport smoking rooms is flaring up once more.
In May, only some months after the 25th anniversary of the federal law banning smoking on domestic U.S. flights, Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, posted a picture on Facebook and Twitter giving thumbs right down to smoking rooms at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Now, numerous anti-smoking businesses are publicly urging Salt Lake City International Airport, which currently has five smoking rooms, to make the airport’s new important terminal — scheduled to open in 2020 — totally tobacco-loose.
“In a kingdom that doesn't permit smoking in different predominant public places and workplaces, it's time that the Salt Lake City International Airport do what is proper to shield the fitness of all of individuals who put it to use through disposing of all of the indoor smoking rooms,” said Brook Carlisle, Utah government relations director for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
For now, the plan is to preserve the smoking lounges as a benefit to people who smoke who make connections on the airport, says SLC spokeswoman Bianca Shreeve.
The lounges “now not only segregate smokers from non-smokers, they keep people who smoke with quick connections from looking to smoke in regions they're no longer imagined to,” she stated.
Initially paid for by way of Phillip Morris and built before the 1996 Olympics, the twelve smoking lounges at Atlanta’s airport “are an amenity that a lot of our passengers still use,” said ATL spokesman Andrew Gobeil. “There are not any immediate plans to shut them.”
In addition to SLC and ATL, there are public indoor smoking spaces in numerous other main U.S. airports, along with Washington Dulles International, McCarran International in Las Vegas, and Denver International.
Nashville International Airport has Graycliff smoking lounges on hand to the ones paying an front rate. T.G.I. Friday’s, in the center of Concourse D at Miami International Airport, has a smoking front room for patrons and the Smokin’ Bear Lodge Smoking Lounge positioned at the back of the Timberline Restaurant at Denver International Airport is accessible with a $five minimum purchase from the restaurant.
At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, there may be a smoking area inside the Admirals Club in Terminal A, despite the fact that American Airlines says that smoking policy is “beneath assessment.”
Dulles Airport has four smoking lounges and considers them an amenity for the “large move segment of passengers we serve, which includes a huge wide variety of global tourists and home travelers boarding or getting off long transcontinental flights,” stated airport spokesman Christopher Paolino.
In Las Vegas, McCarran International Airport permits smoking in select bars and gaming areas.
While the number of U.S. airports offering smoking spaces has declined within the past ten years, a CDC take a look at located that the average air pollution degrees from second-hand smoke directly out of doors targeted smoking areas in 5 huge hub U.S. airports — Washington Dulles, Denver, Salt Lake City, Atlanta and Las Vegas — had been five times better than stages in smoke-free airports.
“Given all the technology that we've got and the fact that so many towns and states are operating toward going smoke-free, the truth that airports aren’t getting into that course more quickly is disconcerting,” stated Cynthia Hallett, executive director of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.
The U.S. Surgeon General agrees. “We recognise second-hand smoke kills,” stated Vivek Murthy thru e-mail. “By making our indoor spaces — like airports — smoke-loose, we can assist prevent forty one,000 deaths each 12 months within the U.S.”
(My story about airport smoking rooms first regarded on USA TODAY as an At the Airport column.)
Denver International Airport is making true on its plan to close down the smoking lounges.
Since May, whilst the metropolis’s mayor held a press conference to announce the plan, 3 of the 4 smoking lounges on the Denver airport have closed. The fourth living room, Timberline, located on on Concourse C, will shut down when its lease expires in 2018.
The lounges that closed this past yr encompass Aviator’s Lounge locations (one was in the Jeppesen Terminal; the other changed into on the B Concourse. The Jeppesen Terminal lounge turns into a Jamba Juice, the B Concourse living room will re-open as the barbecue restaurant known as the Aviator’s Sports Bar and the third lounge, that is located inside of Mesa Verde Restaurant and Bar on the A Concourse, changed into revamped.
If you’re journeying through an airport all through this week’s Thanksgiving travel insanity, right here are some travel tidbits to hold in thoughts.
Worried approximately 2nd-hand smoke?
Then don’t stand close to airport smoking lounges – and recall maintaining your breath whilst you stroll via.
According to a new file from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the common air pollution stages from secondhand smoke immediately outside exact smoking regions in airports are five instances higher than ranges in smoke-free airports.
The CDC studied 5 large hub U.S. airports with special smoking areas available to the public (Denver International, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, Las Vegas’ McCarran International, Salt Lake City International, and Washington Dulles International) and additionally found that air pollutants ranges inside certain smoking regions were 23 instances better than tiers in smoke-free airports. In the take a look at, precise smoking regions in airports covered restaurants, bars, and ventilated smoking rooms.
Turkey dinner inside the sky and at airports
Virgin America has a holiday turkey sandwich on the buy-on-board menu
If you grow to be spending your Thanksgiving Day in an airport or on an plane, you can now not should give up on Turkey Dinner.
In Florida, the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport, inner Orlando International Airport, is serving a mid-day Thanksgiving buffet and several restaurants inside Miami International Airport, including the Ice Box Café (Turkey Special with all the works, pecan pie and a tumbler of vino for $ 20, all week) and the Top of the Port eating place inside the Miami International Airport Hotel, are also making plans to serve traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
At JFK International Airport in New York, passengers flying out of the JetBlue’s Terminal 5 (T5) may be capable of load up on turkey dinner within the Food Court Hot Bar. (Price is through the load of your plate.)
In the air, Southwest Airlines is imparting passengers a complimentary alcohol drink on Thanksgiving Day, Virgin America has a holiday-style turkey sandwich on its purchase-on-board menu, but no different domestic airline I contacted is making any special observe of the vacation.
But numerous global airways are:
Etihad Airways, Air Berlin and Singapore Air are among those supplying unique Thanksgiving meals to passengers flying to and from US gateways.
And many airports have their excursion entertainment agenda underway:
On Wednesday, Nov 21 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport could have a costumed man or woman to examine to youngsters near the Red Balloon Bookshop across from Gate C12 between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the hour and 1/2-hour.
At Miami International Airport, there’s a whole bunch of sports occurring Wednesday Nov 21 and once more on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. twenty fourth and twenty fifth, which includes a caricaturist, opportunities to get your photos taken in a harvest historical past, craft projects for children and giveaways.
San Francisco’s You Are Hear live performance series is underway, with performers scheduled in diverse spots all through the airport on Wednesday, Dec. 21.
There’s live tune scheduled for several spots in Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports on Wednesday as nicely. Find details about the ones airport concert events right here.
And the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, which has 19 (or is it 100?) live concert events every week, has numerous performances scheduled for Wednesday as well.
