Airport Smoking Zones exists to answer one question accurately: where can you smoke at this airport, right now, under the current rules? Smoking facilities change — rooms close, outdoor areas move, laws are amended — so the value of this site rests entirely on whether our information is correct and current. This page explains exactly how we research, verify, and maintain it.
How we research and verify every page
Each airport page is built and maintained from three source types, cross-checked against one another wherever each is available:
- Official airport sources. Terminal maps, airport-authority statements, and the smoking policies airports publish themselves. These establish the baseline — which terminals, which gates, what the airport officially permits.
- First-hand traveller reports and photos. Travellers submit what they actually found, with photos, through the Contribute form on every airport page. On-the-ground evidence is the strongest signal we have, because it catches changes before official maps are updated.
- Our dated review trail since 2017. We have tracked airport smoking facilities for years. That history lets us see when a room opened or closed and weight the newest evidence accordingly.
When these sources disagree, we favour the most recent first-hand evidence, and where something genuinely cannot be confirmed, we say so plainly rather than guess.
Two habits follow from that. We never write “some sources say” or “reports suggest”: a fact is either stated plainly because we have checked it, attributed to whoever actually observed it (“travellers report…”, “the airport’s own site lists…”), or left off the page. And where a claim rests only on traveller observation rather than an official statement, we say so and date it, so you can weigh it yourself.
How the airport pages and country guides relate
The airport page is the source of truth. Each country guide, and each of our worldwide guides, is assembled from the airport pages it covers — never the other way round. When an airport page changes, re-reading the country guide and the worldwide guides that mention that airport and bringing them into line is an editorial check on every review pass — the aim being that the same airport is not described two different ways on two pages. Where a page exists in another language, the English page is corrected first and its translated twin is resynced to match.
Reader photos
Photos submitted through the Contribute form are reviewed by hand, and two things happen automatically before any of them goes live: faces in the frame are blurred, and the image is watermarked and credited. A photo whose blur step cannot complete is held back rather than published. Photos are matched against the terminal layout we already have on the page; the ones that do not match, or that show somewhere other than the smoking area, are not published.
What the “Verified” badge means
Every airport page carries a ✓ Verified [month] badge. It shows the month we last reviewed that specific page against the sources above and updated it if anything had changed.
To be precise about what it does and doesn’t claim:
- It means: we reviewed this page recently, checked it against current sources, and corrected anything that had changed.
- It does not mean: a smoking area is guaranteed open at this exact minute. Airports change facilities with little notice. The badge tells you how fresh our review is, so you can judge how much to rely on it — not that we have a live camera in the terminal.
We deliberately use “Verified” rather than “Confirmed open” because the honest claim is about our review process, not a real-time guarantee. We re-review pages on a rolling basis, and immediately whenever a traveller reports a change.
Reporting a correction
If a smoking area has closed, moved, or a page is wrong, please tell us:
- Use the Contribute form on any airport page, or our Contact page.
- Include the airport, what changed, and — if you can — the date you were there or a photo.
We treat first-hand traveller reports as a priority and update the page, usually within a few days. Corrections refresh the page’s Verified date.
Who is responsible
Abhi, an air-travel writer, researches, edits, and signs off every page on this site, with information contributed and verified by travellers worldwide. Drafting, fact-checking, and the site’s eight-language translations are prepared with research and translation tooling and reviewed by him before publication. Editorial decisions, accuracy, and corrections are his responsibility.
Independence and scope
Airport Smoking Zones is an independent, traveller-focused guide. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any airport, airline, or tobacco company, and we do not sell tobacco products. Our content is navigational and factual — we document where smoking is permitted and the rules that apply, so travellers can plan. We cite official sources where the airport operator publishes one, and link to them in the “Useful Links” section of the page.