Sweden’s well deserved reputation for good design and technology, earned by companies such as car manufacturers Volvo and Saab, has been seriously dented by Skavsta airport. Claiming to be Sweden’s fastest growing airport, and popular with low cost airlines, it calls itself Stockholm Skavsta, although it is an hour and a half’s journey from the capital. Its recent attempt to solve the problem of passive smoking by passengers seems to have been equally over-ambitious, not even aspiring to the inefficient tobacco industry-commissioned devices found elsewhere (see UK: familiar smell at the airport. Tobacco Control2006;15:275–6).

A smoking booth at Sweden’s Skavsta airport.

Skavsta’s smoking booth looks as though it was run up by the airport’s carpenters during their lunch break, but it is not so much the disappointing aesthetic sense that draws attention to its existence, as another striking feature—the strong smell of tobacco smoke in the surrounding areas.