American Airlines will replace its current 7,000 square foot Nashville Admirals Club with a new 17,400 square foot lounge. The airline is touting that this will be the airport’s largest lounge and it will “feature sweeping views of the airfield and a design inspired by Nashville’s vibrant culture and the natural landscapes of Tennessee.”
The new Admirals Club will have outdoor terraces as well as an interior balcony overlooking the airport concourse. Construction should begin next year, and the current lounge will remain open until the new one is ready.
Current Nashville Admirals Club
It’s exciting both for the larger space, and because it’ll mean a lounge in the airline’s new aesthetic which is a tremendous upgrade. Senior Vice President of Customer Experience Design & Strategy Rhonda Crawford shares,
The new Admirals Club lounge at BNA reflects American’s ongoing commitment to enhancing the travel experience. This lounge is designed to give customers the spirit of Nashville while enjoying the comfort, amenities and service they expect from American.
This Adds To Robust Lounge Plans For American
American Airlines is planning new lounges (including new business class Flagship lounges) in Charlotte and Miami. Charlotte gets its first business class lounge, while Miami gets a new one, allowing the D30 Admirals Club to expand into the old space.
Washington National E Concourse Club
They’re refreshing the Chicago O’Hare Concourse L lounge and the Washington National airport D concourse lounge, and building a new lounge in Austin to replace the current one. Plus, the new terminal F at Dallas – Fort Worth will have a lounge complex.
Rendering of New Austin Club
That’s a much more robust pipeline of lounges than we’ve seen from American in a very long time, and American’s lounges that have been debuted over the past five years have been significantly nicer than the ‘modern hospital’ aesthetic they were using since 2017.
American Airlines Philadephia A West Admirals Club
Significant Lounge Plans At Nashville Airport
Last month’s airport board packet reports, “The Future Admirals Club Reimbursable Agreement for American Airlines will take a 7K SF club to almost 30K SF in new Concourse A.”
However, the space was previously discussed as 15,000 – 20,000 feet, which matches American’s announcement. The finance committee packet last March shared,
At American Airlines the team laid out the plans the Board has approved and they endorsed MNAA’s plan they plan to take 10 of those 16 gates so we have tenants for those already and United wants the others.
Some of them are going to be Common Use Gates. We are still in negotiations with American Airlines, but the big news for MNAA is that their current lounge is 7,000 SF and we will have a new lounge on top of Concourse A food court which is 15,000 SF but could be 20,000 SF and they may want it all.
But since months before that, discussions were around 30,000 square feet, so perhaps the amount of space American has been planning for has been in flux – though it would be shocking for them to take 30,000 square feet for a lounge at a non-hub airport, even an important one.
This was in the airport’s Operations Packet:
Delta had a small lounge on Concourse D, and they expanded it from 3K square feet to 15K square feet. American has a 7K square feet lounge on Concourse C, and they intend to take over all 30K square feet, which to us is a good signal that they plan to have long-term success here at BNA.
Commissioner Farner asked if the space on T gates will be a non-affiliated airline. President
Kreulen replied the T gates will be international gates, we can move any airline in and out of those
gates. Commissioner Farner asked if there is a lounge there.President Kreulen stated the south mezzanine looks like one of our carriers will take it over and the north mezzanine the real estate team will put out a Request for Proposal (“RFP”) and test the market to see if one of the credit card lounges wants to come in here.
The other interesting item was plans for a North Mezzanine bank lounge. I haven’t seen a Request for Proposal come through yet. But “credit card lounges” means an expectation of American Express, Chase, or Capital One – though one imagines that third party lounge operators like Plaza Premium, Primeclass, The Club, Aspire or Escape might still bid.
Southwest is planning a Nashville lounge, which has been separately described as South Mezzanine and Central Mezzanine so I assume this is the “one of our carriers” that they expected to “take it over.”
Was last there in 2023; it was overdue for a renovation then. At least the new lobby was nice. They’ll be lucky if all the construction at BNA is finished by 2029. Will be worth it when its finished (see the new LGA).
(Gary, got ‘cloudflare’ warning a few times, recently. Is that just me, or is VFTW getting DDoS’d? Some of the other blogs, DoC, for instance, had an issue within the last week. Hope all is well.)
Oh no…. but it will be in the new A, so I guess the current lounge in C can’t survive.
I love the current BNA Admirals Club…. the model of the AA F-100 in the lobby, the photo board of their 3 million+ milers, the display cases of all the old AA BNA memorabilia.
The BNA club is always crowded. Good to see another lounge expansion.
Nashville is a red hot market and it is not a surprise that lounge growth nationwide is esp. focused on BNA.
AA and DL have long fought for the non-WN traffic and UA’s interest in expanding its number of gates is to keep BNA a strong WN market w/ the big 3 aggressively competing for the rest of the market.
If UA doesn’t come up w/ a lounge on the new A, they will be at a disadvantage.
@Tim Dunn — So, basically, good for Delta, bad for United, like usual? (Even though, this post is about an AA lounge…) Hold onto your Biscoffs!
Nashville isn’t a red hot market. The red hot markets in the U.S. are LGA, JFK, EWR, LAX, SFO.
Any young person with a modicum of ambition is angling to live and work in one of those three metros. I would even argue, given Big Tech’s downfall (cf. Meta laying off 8,000 employees next month), SFO is soon to be out of the running, leaving just NY and LA, the classic coastal behemoths.
To a rough but reasonable approximation, anyone not living in the NY or LA metro areas is a backwards, ignorant, unambitious scrub. A loser.
@manhattan west. Guessing you don’t fly much outside of those 4 markets. Pretty ignorant statement on your part. Lol
Nashville isn’t a red hot market? Go count the boom cranes downtown….
@Manhattan West (EWR) — *sizzle sizzle* so hawt!!
(“next month”?? What do you know, sir??)
“To a rough but reasonable approximation, anyone not living in the NY or LA metro areas is a backwards, ignorant, unambitious scrub. A loser.” I thought they also had to be an Ivy League lawyer billing $1 trillion a year.
@1990 – Meta will lay off 8,000 employees on May 20. It’s the fourth straight year of mass layoffs at Meta. Sigh… just means big tech is no longer a viable career aspiration. Back to the ol’ professional services grind (MBB, IB/PE/HF, V10).
@Randy, @Nashville transplant – please lay off the copium. Boom cranes? Lol. Nashville will never be a hot market because it’s not coastal, among other reasons I can get into later.
“AA and DL have long fought for the non-WN traffic ”
Ok, Tim. Let’s be real here though. You make it sounds like it’s actually a fight between Delta and AA at BNA. It isn’t. Delta is in a distant third place. Running a 20% smaller schedule than AA last year and this year.
Delta has fought for it and lost numerous times and it isn’t hard to see why. Delta has ATL (and LGA but that isn’t unique for DL) that’s unique and helpful for BNA but no other hub O&D advantage like AA has in ORD, DCA, MIA, and DFW. Delta has named BNA a focus city then retreated from that designation when it was clear they wouldn’t take over AA and it was destined to fail — And Delta has NEVER come close to AA’s size at BNA. Even when naming it a focus city, Delta still never came any closer than 20% smaller than AA at BNA.
Meanwhile, AA started and sustained TATL service out of BNA within their JV — something Delta has never even tried.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s always amusing to see you try to frame Delta in the best light as though they’re in a fight with AA for BNA but Delta has always been a perennial and distant third place at BNA despite their marketing. Know your facts before you post dumb comments. I know you hate facts but they’ll help you say fewer dumb things.
@Manhattan West
It’s always fun to see our weird New Yorker (edit — if I recall, I think you claim to actually be from Jersey — not rich enough to live in New York but desperately trying to claim coolness by association) come back under a new pseudonym and post the same ignorant and dumb info about how important it is to live in NYC, LA, or SFO and how no one else matters and is stupid.
How sad your life must be. But also with your level of intelligence, it’s easy to see why you spend so much time in the comment section of a blog explaining your self importance.
Good. More outdoor areas where people can smoke makes for less people wigging out on planes. A surprisingly sensible approach. Now if only CLT would get some badly needed love on the additional lounge front…