According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, indoor smoking is completely banned at 27 of the top 35 U.S. airports.

Make that 28. Well, almost.

Denver International Airport (DIA), which currently has four indoor smoking lounges, announced Friday that three of those smoking areas will be shutting down.

According to a statement from the airport, two concessionaires, Airport Lounges and Quiz-DIA, have agreed to close the three smoking lounges they currently operate by the end of the year. The fourth lounge, Timberline, operated by Smokin’ Bear, LLC, will shut down after its lease expires in 2018.

Two Aviator’s Lounges will close this year: the one in Jeppesen Terminal and the one on the B Concourse. The Jeppesen Terminal lounge will become a Jamba Juice and the B Concourse lounge will re-open as a barbecue restaurant called the Aviator’s Sports Bar.

The third lounge to be closed is inside the Mesa Verde Restaurant and Bar on the A Concourse. Mesa Verde will be remodeled to offer extra seating.

The fourth indoor smoking lounge – inside Timberline Steaks & Grill on Concourse C – will stay open until 2018.

After that: no smoking at Denver International Airport.

Here’s a link to a (long) list of other U.S. airports that ban smoking.

What do you think: should ALL airports ban smoking?

A woman caught smoking in a nonsmoking area of Denver International Airport on Tuesday responded by putting out her cigarette and taking off her clothes.

Around 8:45 a.m., after being asked to extinguish her cigarette, the woman stripped naked in the B Concourse.

“The woman told officers that she’d had no sleep the night before,” said Raquel Lopez, spokesperson for the Denver Police Department.

The woman was taken in for a medical evaluation. “No one was arrested, no one was hurt and no report was filed,” Lopez said.

Police and paramedics responded and “the woman was ultimately transported to a local hospital,” said Laura Coale, Denver International’s director of media relations.

There are four smoking lounges at Denver International airport, including two Aviator’s Club Smoking Lounge locations, but there is no clothing-optional area, Coale said, nor are there plans to create one anytime soon.

(A slightly different version of this story originally appeared msnbc.com.)

The last one – for my “At the Airport” column on USATODAY.com – was back in 2009. Times – and rules about smoking in public places – change, so I’m planning to do another airport smoking survey soon.

It clearly remains a hot topic. Here’s an excerpt from a note Ramona Mccarty sent me recently after finding that 2009 column.

I am a smoker and have been for a long time, you are right when you said that rudeness is part of the problem trust that! DFW is one of the main airports I use and it is not smoker friendly, if I could get into Dallas another way I would where smoking is not considered a crime! only an addiction, an addiction that needs to be fed otherwise you get grumpy, mean people, who otherwise are not like that, but because they can’t support their addictions this is how WE turn out. I am going to try Dallas Love Field because they are smoker friendly without harming non-smokers, because that is not our intentions.

Our money for buying and flying is just as good as non smokers so wheres the beef?! we aren’t asking to blow smoke in peoples faces we are just asking for a right to feed our addiction, like people eating and diners, drinking coffee and cafes, alcoholics and bars, shopaholics and clothes stores, smokers and smoking designated areas, snap! Helllooo.

What do you think? Should more airports offer smoking lounges for passengers?  Should cities that ban smoking in public places make exceptions for airports?

(Photo courtesy State Library of  New South Wales, via Flickr Commons)

This week’s treats come from Anchorage International Airport.

From the wide variety of Alaska-linked items for sale in the airport gifts shops, we chose a few favorites, including these tiny figurines of Alaska Bush Babies,

this Alaska sausage with added reindeer meat.

And easy-to-carry, single-serving portions – just $2.95 – of yummy salmon jerky.

Did you find a great souvenir when you were stuck at the airport? If you find something that costs around $10, is somewhat offbeat and “of” the city or region, please take a photo and send it along.

If your souvenir is featured on StuckatTheAirport.com, you’ll get a travel-related souvenir in your mailbox as a thank-you.

A naked swimmer was nabbed near JFK airport, a mom was briefly jailed in Tennessee for yelling at TSA staff at Nashville Airport and refusing to let her child go through the scanner or get a pat-down and, my favorite, the FBI was called in to meet a Southwest Airlines flight arriving at Salt Lake City Airport and arrest a passenger who got unruly when told repeatedly that he could not “smoke” his electronic cigarette.

And then there’s the threat of this weekend’s “car-maggedon” in Los Angeles.
Gridlock – and worse – is predicted due to the scheduled 53-hour closure of a chunk of Interstate 405.

The highway shutdown will certainly disrupt traveler to and from Los Angeles International Airport and, on its website, the airport has a 405 Freeway Alert page offering tips and advice. In addition to suggesting that travelers take the Flyaway bus to the airport or get a hotel nearby, the advisory lists four different helicopter companies that will provide special weekend service to and from the airport.

Unfortunately, one alternate transportation option offered by JetBlue is already sold out.

The airline was offering $4 flights (each way) between Burbank and Long Beach Airports.

See – sometimes the truth IS stranger than fiction.

I don’t smoke cigars and I probably would have been scared to smuggle it back to Seattle from Vancouver, but if they weren’t so darn expensive, I’d have bought a Cuban cigar there at the liquor store (yes, they have one, right next to North America’s only in-airport 7-Eleven store) at Vancouver International Airport.

It does.

And according to this story, to make sure there are no ifs, ands or, yes butts about it, this spring the DOT  will issue an official ban on the use of those electronic devices on airplanes.

The story reminded me of another alternative nicotine-delivery-system I saw in mass quantities at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport: snus.

In 2009, Arlanda opened a duty-and tax-free store featuring the world’s first “snusidor,” which stocks and displays dozens of different brands and flavors of snus, which is a traditional Swedish smokeless tobacco that, unlike American-style chewing tobacco, doesn’t involve a lot of spitting.

I can’t tell for sure if I’ve ever sat next to a snus user, but I do know that snus is a truly popular Swedish souvenir.

I’ll be writing a column for USA TODAY on some of the intriguing services and amenities on the horizon for travelers, but wanted to share a few tidbits from the day.

The folks from the upscale Graycliff Cigar Company have set up two cigar lounges at Nashville International Airport and are in talks to expand the idea to several other airports.  The company, which also markets gourmet coffee and fancy watches, has a cigar maker on duty here making cigars from several kinds of tobacco.

Graycliff cigar maker at ACI-NA

And here’s a factoid I learned today:

Airport shops run by the Hudson Group sell more than 100,000 rayon, Pashima-style scarves a year.

Laura Samuels of the Hudson Group with scarves

More tomorrow….

A few weeks ago, with photographer Jerome Tso in tow, I got to tour the 787 Dreamliner Gallery, which is where airlines go to shop for the specific components they’ll put in their planes.

My story about that visit (with Jerome’s great photos) will appear on USATODAY.com (and in the paper) next week, but I wanted to share a few of my favorites from that tour.

(Seat choices in the Dreamliner Gallery)

(The colors and materials gallery for the 787 Dreamliner)

Today, Wednesday, Feb. 3, on a tour of  Boeing’s third flight-test 787 Dreamliner, I had a chance to see how the components from the Dreamliner Gallery fit together.

There are six planes in the flight test program and this one – the interior test plane – is the first one to be equipped with seats, lavatories, overhead bins, galleys and some of the other components that passengers care about – like the shade-less windows that can be dimmed just by pushing a button.

It’s great to see just about everything on a brand new type of plane, but there were two items from today’s tour that I found especially intriguing.

The first was in the bathroom.  In addition to touch-less faucets, the lavatories on the 787 Dreamliners have an infrared feature on the toilet that not only flushes but closes the lid!

(Wouldn’t that be handy in your house?)

The other feature that caught my eye was a bit of a mystery.

It looks at first like one of those tiny coat hooks that will fold out from the wall but lie flat when not in use.

But this tiny panel has a cigarette butt symbol on it.

Well, according to the Boeing officials showing us the test plane, even though smoking is indeed not allowed on airplanes, the rules still require that there be ashtrays.

So Boeing set out to design the teeny-tiniest ashtray allowable and came up with this cute one-butt model.

So passengers have to go outside the terminals to light up. And when they’re done, many of those smokers throw their butts on the ground.

It’s not just airports: according to folks at the Surfrider Foundation,  cigarette butts are the most littered item around the world.

So in San Diego this Saturday, November 14th, 2009, from 10 am until noon, groups of people will show up at several busy San Diego intersections – and at the San Diego International Airport – to hand out ashtrays and ask people to clean up their butts.

It’s all part of “Hold Onto your Butt” Awareness Day.