Airport Update
There was no city or county meeting about any smoking ban for the airport.
Airport Director Jerry Orr just did this to be PC and have favor with Charlotte Leadership. Now he is in the same book as Stalin and Hitler to me.
– A Newsletter Reader
Charlotte/Douglas to kick smoking to curb
Airport clears air indoors
GREG LACOUR, glacour@charlotteobserver.com
Go online to post your comments: www.charlotte.com/
BAN BEGINS MARCH 15, 2007
Add Charlotte/Douglas International Airport to a growing list of public places where you can’t smoke indoors.
What it means for smokers
The airport won’t allow smoking anymore in the eight concourse bars and restaurants that permit it. Those are the airport’s only indoor places where smoking is allowed.Smokers will still be able to light up curbside at the terminal entrance, but will be encouraged to move to “courtesy smoking areas” outside each end of the building.
Why the change
Complaints from customers drove the decision, Orr said.
“We’ve been moving this way for a long time,” he said. “We get a lot of cards and letters from people who don’t like secondhand smoke, and a few that say they’d like more areas to smoke.
“But clearly the tide is rising, and it’s time for us to get in step.”
Other airports
Charlotte/Douglas will become the 13th of the nation’s 25 busiest airports to prohibit smoking indoors, according to Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, a California organization that tracks airports’ smoking policies.Airports in the following cities were smoke-free as of October, the organization says: Los Angeles; Dallas-Fort Worth; Houston; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York (John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia); Miami; San Francisco; Orlando; Seattle; Philadelphia; and Boston.
The reaction
HMSHost, the Maryland company that operates the airport’s 52 retail outlets, including the eight that allow smoking, supports the move, the company said in a statement Thursday. The company banned smoking last year at the Fox Skybox bar and grill on Concourse E and hasn’t lost business, Orr said.
What the people say
“They shouldn’t do it. It’s our right to smoke. Look at all the other things in the world that are just as hazardous, if not more. I mean, we are in America, aren’t we?” — Cindy Simpson, 41, of Kannapolis, smoking a Basic 100 outside the Charlotte/Douglas terminal Thursday.
“That’s no big deal. I’ve got one kid and another on the way, and I don’t smoke around them. You shouldn’t be smoking inside anyway.” — Dallas Little, 24, of Hickory, outside the terminal.
“Actually, it sounds fair to me. A person who doesn’t smoke sitting in a bar next to someone who does smoke, if they don’t like the smell of smoke, to me, that’s disrespectful.” — Rebecca Myrick, 41, of Charlotte, outside the terminal.
