BY GREGORY A. HALL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HEBRON -- The nine smoking areas at the Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky International Airport don't discriminate against people whose disabilities are affected by second-hand smoke, an official has told the Federal Aviation Administration.
The comments come in a response by the airport to an Americans with Disabilities Act complaint filed by anti-smoking activists in April.
"Smoking areas are not located in proximity to where the traveler must go in order to purchase a ticket, check or pick up baggage or emplane or deplane," wrote Ted Bushelman, the airport's ADA coordinator, in an Aug. 19 letter to the FAA.
"The policy at the airport is to create a pathway enabling passengers to move through the airport without the need to encounter tobacco smoke from the designated smoking areas," he wrote.
Mr. Bushelman declined to expand upon the letter.
In it, he said the airport has done an evaluation of smoking there, which led to changing its policy in 1987. Before that, smoking was not restricted in terminals or concourses.
Mr. Bushelman's letter also says no evidence has been presented that any of the complainants have been significantly affected by smoking in the airport.
One of the four people who filed the report chastised the airport in a letter dated Tuesday for not performing an evaluation as required by the ADA.
The letter from Billy Williams of Lewisville, Texas, says Mr. Bushelman is misleading the FAA.
The other three complainants are Amberley Village resident Ahron Leichtman, executive director of Citizens for A Tobacco-free Society, and American Airlines employees Patricia Young of Dallas and Norma Broin of Stafford, Va.
Their beef, Mr. Williams said on Thursday, is as much with the FAA as it is with the airport. The group filed a similar complaint against the St. Louis airport in an attempt to get the FAA's support for their interpretation of the ADA requirements.
The activists say the ADA requires a self-evaluation of the effects of smoking at the airport, which they claim hasn't been done.
They say the FAA and the airport prefer to react to individual complaints rather than proactively examine the effects of smoking. Travelers interviewed Thursday in or near one of the airport's smoking areas said a better job could be done with ventilation. Mike Sarver, an engineer from Cape Cod, Mass., ranked the airport among its counterparts that he's been in as average in terms of ventilation. "Ventilation should be improved for both smokers and non-smokers," said Mr. Sarver, who smokes.
He said airports should have a smoking area.
"Whereas none of us should be smoking, some of us have that habit," he said.
Non-smokers Charles and Beverly Wheat of New Orleans said they don't mind having designated smoking areas.
"If I had my way, no one would smoke. But that's their business, not mine," he said.
