American Airlines Pivots, Will Open New Austin Admirals Club In Different Airport Location

I covered all of the airport lounge moving pieces at the Austin airport like plans for all airlines to move to different spaces, and to add credit card and common use lounges, as new construction finishes.

It seems worth noting that the plan that American Airlines announced for a new 15,000 square foot lounge near gate 14 three years ago is not happening.


November 2021 New Lounge Rendering, Credit: American Airlines

They’re still getting a new lounge, despite pulling back significantly in Austin and eliminating around two-thirds of destinations served. But it won’t be as large, and it will be in a different space.

Austin is adding gates to the west end of the airport, which will allow them to take gates offline in order to built a connection to a new concourse that they are going to build. This ‘West Gate Expansion’ includes space for a lounge, and a lease has been signed to turn that into an Admirals Club, according to a new airport presentation.

It will be 11,575 square feet including an outdoor terrace. That will be around 50% more space than the current club. That’s smaller than the originally-planned doubling of space, but American has pulled back its flight expansion in the city, axing around two-thirds of its destinations and flying almost exclusively now to hubs.


Current Admirals Club Austin

The lounge will not open until 2027 (the new gate area isn’t projected to open until 2026). That’s six years after a new club was announced.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Glad to see the details but the fact that the new AC was going into the new west gate expansion has been known for years

  2. American is still investing in AUS. The ATX frenzy was called for, BUT: was a bit too early and everyone ramped up too much, too fast.

  3. When was the original Admiral’s Club commissioned? 50% more space sounds like a reasone to both passenger growth and the US Airways acquisition if that lounge has been around in its current form since prior to 2013.

    Will be interesting to see if AA shifts to renting the gates closest to the lounge once the lounge comes online, versus their more central location right now. At which point United can fill in closer to the center of the concourse, and WN will wind up sharing gates with not-AA.

    Betting common use gates get reshuffled earlier than that tonne honest as Delta will soon need all of gate space on the east end of the airport that they can get, shoving Alaska out of what are currently common-use gates that primarily get used by AS.

  4. Terrific. We can get our 10,000 steps walking between covered parking, security, lounge and retracing steps to gate.

  5. Gotta wonder when we AA address CLT and PHX. I would think the new A Concourse at CLT could fit a new, third club.

  6. For passengers on the BA flight, they will need to walk the entire length of the concourse from the new Admirals Club on the far west end to the gate on the far east end. What a hike!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *