Overcrowded airport lounges is a worldwide problem. And lounge guests who don’t seem like they belong in a space that was once considered refined is a problem everywhere you go. I felt seen reading this article in – of all things – the Nagpur edition of Indian newspaper The Hitavada published on Sunday.
Many of us may have experienced this. Author spot on. pic.twitter.com/x1KyHLl62S
— Vice Admiral Jaggi Bedi (Retd) (@JaggiBedi) April 12, 2026
If the airport terminal is a test of patience, the Lounge is a full-blown gladiator arena. For the Indian traveller, the lounge is not a place to relax; it is a high-stakes tactical mission to extract maximum ‘Value for Money’ from a credit card that offers two complimentary visits per quarter. The moment that glass door opens, the transformation from ‘tired traveller’ to ‘buffet commando’ is instantaneous.
The strategic perimeter: The first rule of the Lounge Siege is to secure a base of operations. Before a single grain of rice is sighted. A sophisticated deployment of personal effects take place, draping a laptop bag over one chair, a denim jacket over another, and perhaps a single shoe or a half-eaten packet of chips on a third. This ensures a family of four can sit together. Once the perimeter is established the reconnaissance begins.
The ‘poha’-pasta paradox: The lounge buffet is a surreal landscape where the laws of culinary pairing die a messy death. On a single porcelain plate, you will find a geological layering of architectural wonder. A base of oily ‘poha’; a lonely, slightly damp chicken nugget; a scoop of penne arrabbiata and a ‘gulab jamun’ swimming precariously in a lake of ‘sambar’.
The frantic frenzy is driven by the primal fear that the ‘paneer butter masala’ might run out before your next trip.
This leads to the mountain manoeuvre: Piling food so high that it defies gravity. If you aren’t carrying a plate that looks like a scale model of the Himalayas, are you even getting your credit card’s worth? To eat lightly is to let the banks win, and no self-respecting traveller will allow that.
The beverage border dispute: Then there is the coffee machine—the ultimate bottleneck of human civilisation. Here, a silent war of attrition takes place. There is always one person—usually an uncle in a safari suit—trying to decipher the ‘Cappuccino’ button as if it were the launch code for a nuclear missile. Behind him, a line of twelve people vibrates with the intensity of a jet engine. Meanwhile, at the bar, the ‘Free Alcohol’ signal goes out like a silent whistle. Suddenly, people who haven’t had a drink in three years are double-fisting gin and tonics at 10:30 AM, because “It’s included, na?”
The ‘last boarding call’ looting: The approaching boarding time triggers the snack heist. Suddenly, the ‘all-you-can-eat’ policy is interpreted as ‘all-you-can-carry’.
Apples, small packets of Marie biscuits, and those tiny sealed water bottles disappear into handbags and laptop sleeves with the speed of a magician’s sleight of hand.
The logic is bulletproof: the airline might offer a dry, overpriced sandwich, but the lounge offers a ‘takeaway’ service that—while not officially sanctioned—is morally required.
As the traveller stumbles toward the gate, clutching a stomach full of mismatched carbs and a pocket full of sugar sachets, there is a profound sense of victory. They have conquered the lounge.
Most importantly, they have eaten enough to power a small village for a week, all for the price of a two-rupee credit card authentication charge!
Turkish Airlines Lounge, Washington Dulles
American Express Centurion Lounge, Philadelphia
It’s all about scarcity psychology, middle class status performance, and aggressive value extraction. The lounge is supposed to be a premium refuge, but travelers treat it like anything but – sizing seats, piling plates, queueing for coffee, and raiding the snack station before boarding.
- Lounge access is not experienced as luxury. It is experienced as a challenge to maximize return on a scarce credit card perk.
- Once “free” enters the picture, ordinary standards collapse. They’re maximizing intake, not building meals.
- Crowding leads to territory marking, fear of shortage, and queueing.
“If you get 36 slices of salami per Delta sky club lounge visit, you break even on your annual fee after just 30.5 lounge visits.”
@meat.slut Delta executives hate this 1 money saving trick #meat #traveltiktok #travel #foryoupage #fyp #meatslut @delta ♬ Little Bitty Pretty One – Thurston Harris
One passenger at the New York JFK Chase Sapphire lounge was spotted maybe taking what amounts to a record for food removed from a lounge?
The couple next to me filled up two duffel bags worth of food. They basically shoved entire plates of desserts, prepared food, etc. and ordered six Sapphire Burgers, etc. and put them in their duffel bags inside empty boxes they had brought. There was a huge pile of empty plates they stashed behind a plant.
Chase Sapphire Lounge, Las Vegas
Lounges are victims of their own success with a collapse of decorum under crowding and attracting customers who desperately need to maximize “free” regardless of quality. The more crowded lounges become, the more norms deteriorate.
Credit card-accessible lounges scaled access well beyond their premium capacity. American Express isn’t looking to deliver a quality lounge, they’re looking to grow their cardmember portfolio. And as long as people keep applying for the card, it reinforces that Centurion lounges are at least good enough as they are. Crowding and mass experience isn’t just a function of passengers and constraints, it’s the business model.
Ironically, card access first drove quality. Amex Centurion lounges were better than airline lounges. And airline lounges themselves have gotten better due to the competition. That was attractive to more people than those lounges could handle. And now cardmembers will wait an hour in line to get into a busy space when they could be relaxing at the airport TGI Friday’s the whole time.
Seems like people should have more integrity than that and that couple clearly planned on doing that. Maybe there should be someway you can only order one burger/main dish per person? To stop people like that who ruin these lounges for everyone else. Who took the picture of it—could they have stopped it? Makes you wonder..
What they are doing is basically stealing when they take that much food. A little bit for your flight is one thing, bringing boxes and 2 duffle bags worth of food is another.
Can’t buy class and some of the behavior in lounges prove it.
There’s nothing in the rules that says a dog can’t play basketball… or you can’t order and take 6 hamburgers…
“Bunch of savages in this airport lounge.”
I have worked with many Indian and Chinese nationals that were great people so this isn’t meant to be racist. However I run into people all over the world that complain about the way most Indian and mainland Chinese nationals act. Crowding, pushing, littering, breaking into lines etc are common behavior. Assume it is cultural but not a good experience for the rest of us
You seem fixated by this “stolen food problem.” I recall you’ve done several other posts on this topic. I visit more than 50 lounges a year, year after year, I think I’ve seen someone take food ONCE, in a Tupperware. And it wasn’t a lot of food, like something you might want to eat on the plane. I’m sure it happens more than this (I’m not lounge security) but I’m certain that “mass food theft” is very rare. Of course somebody wanting a bag of chips for their foodless domestic flight would be much more common, which is why US lounges rarely have packaged snacks.
The REAL lounge probably is that the lounges are massively oversubscribed. And I fear it’s getting worse, as the elite seem to love these expensive credit cards that give them lounge access. I was just in a Chase Sapphire lounge at an off peak time — the terminal was empty — but the lounge was packed to capacity. This is the real airport lounge problem, and I don’t see an obvious solution — raising vard fees and limiting companions hasn’t worked.
I remember meeting a prolific FlyerTalk poster on a flight about 15 years ago. At the lounge in MSP he proceeded to fill bags with the snack mix. Back then not so much to take but ‘take’ he did. This was back when lounges were populated by road warriors and nerds who figured out the games of the programs, fewer of the ‘tourists’ that fill them now.
Did my second Chase lounge waited one hour to enter (las Vegas)and they forgot I was standing letting in others out of order who arrived after me.
The ordering system like the first visit in San Diego crashed
Coffee machine broken and the smash burger just not my thing at all. The cornbread was great and everything else pretty much sucked
Folks gobbled up their food as though they hadn’t eaten in a few days
Happy to sit at the gate. Clubs have become for the common folks so when everyone has access their is nothing exclusive about lounge access
Décor was nice but unlikely to return Some team members were pleasant to their credit
i think if someone was feeling a duffel bag worth, then they should be have the privilege of the lounge taking away. So wrong.