Yes, you can smoke at Inverness Airport (INV) at the dedicated smoking shelter a few metres outside the front doors of the terminal, towards the Courtyard hotel. That shelter is the designated place on the airport site; the terminal itself and the outdoor airfield areas are kept free of smoking and vaping, so plan your cigarette before you clear security.
The Designated Smoking Shelter
Inverness keeps things simple: one shelter, landside, right by the terminal entrance. The airport’s own description places it “several meters outside the front doors of the terminal, towards the direction of the Courtyard Hotel,” and asks passengers to make use of it.
That puts it seconds from check-in, from the arrivals exit and from the taxi rank and short-stay parking, which is about as convenient as a landside smoking area gets. It is covered, which matters on the Moray Firth coast — Highland weather rolls in fast, and the walk to it is short enough that you will not get soaked.
Elsewhere on the site the rule is uniform. The terminal interior is smoke-free under Scotland’s Smoking, Health and Social Care Act 2005, and the airport extends the same request to the outdoor airfield areas, so the shelter by the front doors is where a cigarette belongs.
After Security
Every smoking option at Inverness is landside. Once you have cleared the checkpoint, a cigarette means walking back out of the departure lounge, using the shelter and being screened again.
One local detail makes that riskier at Inverness than at most airports: security closes just after the last scheduled departure time, and the airport warns that entry to the departure lounge after that point is not possible. Leaving the secure side late in the day can therefore be a one-way trip. Take your smoke break before you go through, and treat the departure lounge as a no-return commitment on the last flights of the evening.
If you are connecting rather than starting your journey here, the same landside-only pattern applies at most Scottish airports, so it is worth planning smoke breaks around your layover before you leave home.
Terminal Layout and Airlines
Inverness is a single-terminal airport at Dalcross, roughly nine miles northeast of the city, handling around 800,000 passengers a year. It is the busiest of the eleven regional airports run by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL). The terminal opens from 04:15 to 22:45 daily, and its compact layout means check-in, security and the departure lounge are all within a couple of minutes’ walk of each other — and of the smoking shelter outside.
Scheduled services are a mix of UK trunk routes and island connections: British Airways to London Heathrow, easyJet to London Gatwick, London Luton, Birmingham and Bristol, Aer Lingus to Dublin, TUI to Majorca, KLM to Amsterdam, and Loganair to Manchester, Belfast City, Kirkwall, Stornoway and Sumburgh.
The KLM link is the one that turns Inverness into a long-haul starting point. Note that Schiphol’s designated smoking area on Jan Dellaertplein is landside, before security — so the Inverness shelter is your last easy cigarette until you have fully arrived at the far end.
Arriving by train is worth a note if you smoke. Inverness Airport railway station opened in February 2023 and is about eleven minutes from Inverness city centre, then roughly a twenty-minute walk to the terminal along an uncovered path around the airfield perimeter. That walk is airport land, so save your cigarette for the shelter at the front doors rather than lighting up on the path.
Vaping and E-Cigarettes
Vape at the same dedicated shelter outside the front terminal doors. Inverness treats e-cigarettes exactly as it treats tobacco: the airport asks passengers to keep smoking and vaping out of the terminal and the outdoor airfield areas, and directs them to the shelter instead. On the packing side, HIAL is explicit that vapes, e-cigarettes, spare lithium batteries and power banks must be carried in your hand luggage and never packed in checked baggage. Since June 2025 disposable vapes can no longer be sold anywhere in the UK, so travel with a refillable device.
Summary
| Area | Smoking Allowed | Location Details |
|---|---|---|
| Shelter outside the front doors | Yes | A few metres from the terminal entrance, towards the Courtyard hotel |
| Inside the terminal | No | Smoke-free throughout, including toilets |
| After security / departure lounge | No | Smoke landside first; security closes just after the last scheduled departure |
| Outdoor airfield areas | No | Covered by the same airport-wide request |
| Vaping | Outdoor shelter only | Same rule as cigarettes; carry devices in hand luggage |
For United Kingdom airport smoking rules, vaping rules, and other general info, see our United Kingdom smoking guide.