June 5, 2012 / USA Today Travel / — Want to light up a cigarette before or after your next flight? Good luck with that.  According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, indoor smoking is completely banned at 27 of the 35 busiest U.S. airports.  Soon it will be 28. Well, make that 27 and 3/4.

Denver International Airport, currently the only public building in Colorado where indoor smoking lounges are still legal, is on its way to becoming smoke-free.

At a May 18th airport press conference, Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock announced that lease-holders for three of the four smoking lounges at Denver airport have agreed to shutter those lounges by the end of this year and remodel or replace them with non-smoking concessions.

The Aviators’ Lounge in the Jeppesen Terminal will become a branch of Jamba Juice; the lounge on the B Concourse will become a barbecue restaurant called the Aviator’s Sports Bar; and the Mesa Verde Restaurant and Bar on the A Concourse will be remodeled, removing its smoking area.

The fourth lounge, inside Timberline Steaks & Grill on Concourse C, will not shut down until after its lease expires in 2018, but Hancock said his goal “is to get it to shut down sooner than later,” so that Denver Airport can “join the ranks of Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and many other major U.S. airports who have eliminated smoking in the past few years.”

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