I’m Abhi — the creator of Airport Smoking Zones, and the person responsible for every airport guide, news article, and long-form guide on this site. I research each page, edit it, and sign it off before it goes live.
Why I started this site
I’ve flown more than 400,000 km across 100+ airports worldwide as an aviation enthusiast and frequent traveler. Somewhere around airport #30, I realised the same problem kept happening: I’d land at a new airport, try to find the smoking area, and end up wandering for 20 minutes asking strangers, ground staff, and (occasionally) confused security personnel. The information online was fragmentary, often years out of date, and rarely terminal-specific.
The official airport websites were even worse. Most either didn’t mention smoking areas at all, or used generic copy like “designated areas are available” with no map, no terminal, no gate number. For a smoker on a 90-minute layover, that’s not useful.
So in 2017 I started Airport Smoking Zones. The premise was simple: every airport page would tell you exactly where the smoking room is — which terminal, which floor, which gate cluster, what door — based on actual recent travel experience, not corporate press release copy.
How the site works
The airport pages, country guides, and news articles are all mine editorially: I research them, edit them, and sign them off. Drafting, fact-checking, and the site’s eight-language translations are prepared with research and translation tooling, and I review every one of them before publication. Every page goes through the same checklist:
- Terminal-specific detail: which gates, which floors, indoor or outdoor, before or after security
- National regulatory context: the actual law (COTPA in India, the Health Act 2006 in the UK, the 2019 Federal Law N 38-FZ amendment in Russia, etc.) and how it applies to airports — set out on each country guide, with the airport page pointing to it rather than repeating it
- Vape and IQOS rules: separate from cigarettes because the rules often differ
- Layover practicality: can a transit passenger actually reach the smoking area without re-clearing security
- Recent verification: I check policy changes regularly, and the corpus goes through periodic fact-check sweeps — most recently in 2026, when every airport page in our completed review cohorts was re-read against official sources and every country guide re-read against the airport pages it covers. Reviews are rolling, so some pages are still queued for their sweep.
Where I haven’t personally flown an airport recently, I rely on a network of frequent-flier readers who share photos, ratings, and tips directly on each airport page — every airport listing has a Contribute form and a rating widget built in. Every contribution is moderated before going live: I check the photo, the description, and cross-reference against the latest known policy. Faces in reader photos are blurred automatically before publication, and the site shows the contributor’s name (or “Anonymous” by default) on the airport page so credit goes where it’s due.
Travel & airport background
- 400,000+ km flown across business and personal travel since the early 2010s
- 100+ airports visited, ranging from major hubs (Doha, Tokyo Haneda, Frankfurt, Singapore Changi) to small regional airports (Imphal, Vilankulo, Hakodate)
- Specific deep familiarity with: Indian airports (60+ visited including all major metros and 25+ tier-2 cities), Southeast Asian transit hubs, Middle Eastern long-haul connection points, and Western European Schengen routing
- Aviation interest: I follow airport infrastructure changes — terminal openings, runway expansions, policy amendments — as a hobby, which keeps the site current with industry shifts (e.g., Shanghai closing its airport smoking rooms in 2016, India’s 2019 PECA vape ban, the 2022-2023 Mexico Ley Antifumo amendments)
Why trust the information on this site?
Three things underpin the site’s reliability:
Single editorial voice. Every page is held to the same verification standards and signed off by me. If you read 10 airport pages here, the same person edited all 10 and checked each one against the same bar.
Reader contributions, moderated. Frequent flyers share photos and tips through the contribution system. I personally review each one before it goes live, looking for: does the photo match the airport, does the description match the verified layout, does the tip align with current policy. Contributions that are incorrect, outdated, or duplicates are rejected.
Near-real-time updates. When an airport changes its smoking policy (closes a room, opens a new terminal, raises a setback distance), the site is updated as soon as I learn about it — usually within days. Every airport page carries a ✓ Verified month in the header under the title showing when I last checked it, with the full last-updated date in the byline just below it and again at the foot of the page.
For the full breakdown of how every page is sourced, verified, and corrected — and what the Verified badge on each airport page means — see our Editorial & Verification Policy.
Get in touch
If you’ve travelled through an airport recently and the page here is wrong, please tell me — either through the Contribute form built into the airport page itself or via the contact form. Your boots-on-the-ground report is the most reliable input I get.
If you’re a journalist, researcher, or aviation industry contact who needs to reach me for a quote or fact-check, the contact page goes straight to my inbox. I respond to legitimate inquiries within 48 hours.
Safe travels, and may your layover always have a smoking room within 100 metres of your gate.
— Abhi