The Alaska Airlines Lounge in San Francisco has returned to Priority Pass, but with a twist. You can access this lounge with a $15 co-pay.
That means both SFO airport Priority Pass lounge options in terminal 1 include a premium cash component, since The Club lounge there offers paid reservations to avoid queueing.
The Alaska Lounge cash co-pay is another example of add-on fees to access Priority Pass lounges, like the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse LAX which admits based on normal Priority Pass plus a mandatory $35 per person paid to the lounge.
Access to this lounge requires a standard visit allocation and mandatory additional fee of US$15 per person, payable directly to the lounge upon entry. This fee is in addition to any other fees your membership requires. Guests are subject to the same fee. This upgrade offers Cardholders an elevated experience.
Alaska’s willingness to monetize their lounge with Priority Pass shows just much the airline’s passenger presence has declined in San Francisco – they’ve really pulled down the hub that came with the Virgin America acquisition.
- Shortly after acquiring Virgin America, the two airlines operated 83 daily departures to 35 destinations.
- Today, they’re down to about 42 daily departures to 24 daily destinations.
After Alaska acquired Virgin America, they added several San Francisco routes including Philadelphia, New Orleans, Nashville, Indianapolis, Raleigh/Durham, Baltimore, Albuquerque, and Kansas City.
Since then, however, they’ve dropped Albuquerque, Austin, Nashville, Boston, Burbank, Baltimore, Dallas Love Field, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Washington Dulles, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mexico City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Missoula, New Orleans, Omaha, Chicago O’Hare, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh/Durham, Salt Lake City, and Tampa.
They’ve kept cutting. Boston ended January 6, 2026. Austin ended February 11, 2026. Burbank, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City ended March 17, 2026. Orlando will end on May 12, 2026 and Newark on June 9, 2026.
The airline has largely been beaten by United in San Francisco. United had 45% of seats in 2018 and that grew to 48.7% in 2025. That growth of 3.7 points came at the expense of Alaska’s 3.5 point drop from 13% to 9.5% in that same period. Alaska retreated as limited aircraft were deployed elsewhere and San Francisco travel was slower to recover from the pandemic – but United stuck to its guns there.
It’s hard to see how the Virgin America play turned out to be anything other than a failure, considering they’ve also retreated from markets with scarce gate and slot allocations that the deal bought them, like Dallas Love Field and New York LaGuardia (leased to Southwest) and Washington’s National airport (leased to Southwest).
(HT: Chris)
Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Hey, any word on JFK Alaska lounge (currently closed)? Used to have one in T7, but they are knocking it down for the new T6/7. (Because, while I like the Atmos Summit, those of us on the east coast are gonna struggle to actually use those 2 passes/quarter.)
More ripoff fees come to PP. Just say no.
“That means both SFO airport Priority Pass lounge options include a premium cash component”
There are 5 SFO airport Priority Pass lounge options, 3 of which do not have a premium cash component.
Hmm.
This PP copay trend is a bit troublesome. I get that absent a copay the AS lounge and the Virgin lounge at LAX would likely not be choices at all. Yet if PP signals that such is an option, will the better lounges in their system demand the same? I am not certain this ends well.
@Gene — Our poor little PP… (between this and the loss of LH lounges via Platinum, what’r we gonna do now with our 8 “Priority Pass Select” memberships?!)