Yes, you can smoke at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) after security, in the open-air Airside Garden that opens off the Grand Hall on Level 2. Before the checkpoint, smoking happens outdoors on the curbs and parking areas, clear of the terminal doors. The terminal building itself is smoke-free from ticketing through to the gates, so the garden is the spot that matters to a departing or connecting smoker.
How Greenville-Spartanburg Airport Is Laid Out
GSP is a single, compact terminal with 13 gates spread over three levels. Level 1 holds the airline ticket counters, baggage claim and ground transportation. Level 2 holds the security checkpoint and, beyond it, the Grand Hall — the post-security heart of the airport, with The Kitchen by Wolfgang Puck, Chick-fil-A, Sully’s Steamers, Baskin-Robbins, the Escape Lounge and the Upstate Marketplace. Level 3 carries the two concourses: Concourse A with gates A1 to A9, and Concourse B with gates B1 to B4.
Seven airlines fly from Greer — Allegiant, American, Avelo, Breeze, Delta, Southwest and United — and the airport handled 3,043,621 passengers in 2025, a 5.7% rise on the year before and the first time GSP has cleared three million in a single year.
The Airside Garden — Smoking After Security
The Airside Garden is the reason GSP is worth knowing about. It is a genuine outdoor garden inside the secure area, one of the few in the United States that a passenger can reach without surrendering their place beyond the checkpoint. It has been part of the airport since it opened in 1962, was rebuilt during the WINGSPAN terminal programme in 2016, and picked up landscape-architecture awards in 2018 and 2019 for the result: lawns and seating terraces, two fountains, benches saved from the original garden, and plantings framing views across the tarmac to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The Greenville-Spartanburg Airport District’s Rules and Regulations allow smoking in designated locations only and bar lit cigarettes, pipes and electronic cigarettes inside any building or near a building entrance. The garden is where that permission lands on the secure side. Travellers smoking there report ashtrays in place, and note that some of the seating within the garden is signed as non-smoking — so head for the marked spots rather than the first free bench, and keep clear of the doors back into the Grand Hall.
Being outdoors, it is weather-dependent. Upstate South Carolina summers are hot and humid, and winter mornings can sit near freezing, so a short break is the realistic plan on either extreme.
Concourse A
Smoking: Walk down to the Airside Garden off the Grand Hall — a couple of minutes from any A gate. After security: Yes, via the garden; no need to re-clear the checkpoint.
Concourse A covers gates A1 to A9, the larger of the two wings and the base for most of the American, Delta and United departures. Triumph Taproom sits on this concourse for craft beer and local fare, alongside a Hudson gift shop, Escape Pods and massage chairs. The stairs and lifts down into the Grand Hall put the garden within easy reach of every gate on the pier.
Concourse B
Smoking: Same Airside Garden, reached through the Grand Hall below. After security: Yes, via the garden; you stay inside the secure area throughout.
Concourse B holds gates B1 to B4 — the smaller wing, used heavily by the low-cost carriers. RJ Rockers Flight Room serves craft beer and food from the Spartanburg brewery of the same name, with a Hudson store and more Escape Pods alongside. As on Concourse A, the garden is one level down and a short walk away.
After Security
Because the Airside Garden is inside the secure area, a smoke break at GSP costs you only the walk. There is no exit, no re-screening and no queue to rejoin — an unusual luxury at a US airport, where the standard drill is to leave the terminal entirely and start again at the checkpoint.
That makes GSP a comfortable connection for smokers, and a useful contrast with the hubs it feeds. American routes most of its Greenville traffic through Charlotte, where smoking at Charlotte Douglas is confined to the outdoor curbside areas well back from the terminal doors, and Delta’s Greenville flights run through Atlanta, where the smoking areas at Hartsfield-Jackson are the outdoor spots by the numbered terminal doors. Both of those mean leaving the secure area; GSP does not. If you are working out whether a connection leaves you enough room for a cigarette, our guide to smoking during layovers walks through the arithmetic.
Landside, before the checkpoint, the ordinary rules apply: step away from the entrance doors on the ticketing or baggage-claim level and use the open ground toward the parking garages.
E-Cigarettes and Vaping
Vaping follows cigarettes exactly at GSP. The Airport District’s rules list electronic cigarettes with cigars, cigarettes and pipes as products that cannot be carried lit or in use into any building or near a building entrance, which makes the Airside Garden the place to vape after security and the outdoor curbs the place to vape before it. TSA rules put vape devices and spare batteries in carry-on baggage only — they cannot travel in a checked bag — and using one on board an aircraft is prohibited by federal rule.
Summary
| Area | Smoking | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Airside Garden (Level 2, off the Grand Hall) | Yes | Outdoor garden inside the secure area; ashtrays in place, some seating signed non-smoking |
| Grand Hall | No | Post-security dining and retail, all indoors and smoke-free |
| Concourse A (gates A1–A9) | No | Walk down to the Airside Garden |
| Concourse B (gates B1–B4) | No | Walk down to the Airside Garden |
| Terminal interior (Levels 1–3) | No | Smoke-free throughout under the Airport District rules |
| Outside the terminal | Yes | Curbs and parking areas, clear of the entrance doors |
| Vaping / e-cigarettes | Same as smoking | Airside Garden after security; outdoors before it |
For USA airport smoking rules, state vape rules, lighter rules at TSA, and other federal/state info, see our USA smoking guide.