I am not a smoker, but provide airport smoking guides in an effort to help smokers and reduce second-hand smoke. My views on smoking at airports remain unchanged. Doha Hamad International Airport (DOH) claims to be a “smoke-free facility” but in reality smoking rooms are widely available.
Smoking At DOH Airport
Very simply, as you make your way through the terminal, you will come across separately-ventilated smoking rooms every 100 meters or so.
At midnight, ahead of Qatar Airways’ late-night departure bank, the smoking rooms will be packed. As a non-smoker, I cannot imagine how nasty that must be to be in a room that is absolutely packed with smokers huddled around ashtrays trying to smoke a cigarette or two or three ahead of their flight.
One complaint is that when these rooms are so full, the smoke does waft out and you smell it in the departure hall (faintly, but it is there). It would be nice if they were double-doored.
Other smoking rooms require you to walk down a hallway in order to enter, which further reduces the risk of second-hand smoke.
You will have no trouble finding a place to smoke here, though no restaurant offers a smoking area nor is there any outdoor terrace that I am aware of in which smoking is permitted.
CONCLUSION
Doha Hamad International airport is a smoker-friendly airport. You will easily find a place to smoke before your flight or during a layover.
A personal request. I write these smoking guides even though I am a non-smoker to try to keep people from smoking outside airport entrances. Understand that when you smoke there, everyone walking by inhales your smoke. However, when you use the designated areas, no one smells it except those who choose to be there (as long as the door remains shut).
Imagine being seated next to one of these people on a flight back to the states. They should be required to shower and put on fresh clothes
Its been shown in studies that high sugary foods and processed foods are just as bad for your longevity and health and getting cancer as smoking is. Just saying.
But unless someone is eating Panda Express or McDonald’s next to me, sugar and processed foods don’t stink.
Um, no Tony. You’re “just saying” incorrectly. Those other habits are certainly bad for you and cancer linked, but smoking is still the king of cancer causation.
Yet eating poorly affects only that person- not others. You’ve missed the impact of second hand and third hand smoke.
Changi is the best, with outdoor elevated smoking patios. Don’t understand why more airports don’t do this.
I have never smoked indoors, in a vehicle or anything similar. It stinks, makes anyone, stinky and I despise the odor. I take such precautions as covering my hair & washing my hands after every cig. It’s disgusting and I refuse to enter any airport smoke box. Frankly you needn’t light up if you do so. Eliminating those boxes would be a godsend. This is coming from a smoker
But when you smoke outdoors, do you do it in front of the door so that everyone has to walk through a cloud of smoke? That’s such a problem at LAX to this day that I wish each terminal still had a smoking area.
Thanks for writing this. This issue is the bane of my existence – everywhere. Cig smoke makes me violently ill. And RDU is awful – smokers everywhere. Please keep writing.
Glad they have these rooms in DOH. Godda get my nic fix in before flying 14 hours. Especially if I must enter a country to go outside, which I prefer to the rooms. SIN & IST have it figured out with the outdoor areas airside. Thanks for the info Matthew.
So if you are a dude, you can’t have a beer or another man’s c#ck, but a cigarette is fine. Got it.
Exactly
Huh?
As a non-smoker, it drives me crazy that most airports have gone to great lengths to remove smoking areas (air-side). All this does is either force smokers to go through security to get out to the curb and then in turn add more people coming back through security or make smokers nervous and edgy which isn’t good in an airport either.