American Airlines will open a new, expanded Admirals Club on the L concourse at Chicago O’Hare. Their main Admirals Club and Flagship lounge are both at H/K, and there’s a Concoure G club as well.
This L club will go from worst to first, as it grows to 10,000 square feet and takes on the new design aesthetic that American has rolled out to places like Washington National (E Concourse), Denver, Newark and Philadelphia (A West).
The lounge is after security, before Gate L1. And it’s really just currently a sad room and a four seat conference room and a bar. If memory serves this used to be the old Delta Sky Club that American took over a decade ago. It’s the smallest of American’s Chicago clubs, more or less non-descript industrial but with plenty of natural light (roadway, nut runway, views) and very few power outlets. Still, it’s a convenient place to sit near the L gates and usually calm.
Eventually I’d expect to see a new American lounge open in the future O’Hare Global Terminal – sometime in the mid-2030s. But it’ll be really nice to see this L-gate upgrade in the meantime. And it’s clearly part of American’s renewed commitment to compete at the airport. With capital spending on lounge, $30 million for two of Spirit’s gates and a rebuild of their schedule to return to pre-pandemic volumes, the airline was shaken out of its complacency by losing gates to United in the airport’s (premature) gate reallocation scheme.
American Airlines Flagship Lounge at H/K
View From American Airlines H/K Admirals Club
They’re the underdog against United Airlines, which has a bigger presence and has vowed to drive them out. But the airport has also become a rallying cry that shows American still has fight left in them which is great to see.
American needs to be competitive in Chicago because of its importance as a credit card spending market, especially after having lost ground in New York and Los Angeles and seeing its Citi cobrand go from number one in airline credit card spend volumes down to number three.
The Swissport lounge at T5 is the worst O’Hare “airline” lounge in some ways.
Swissport got to have a lounge at ORD because it met the previous requirement of the parent company having some airline ownership.
Not sure who owns the “new” Wingtips lounge that is in what was the SAS lounge space at ORD T5.
Poor PHX. Again, the hated child that is forced to live in a closet.
Excellent. For passengers at least, this is an important investment and improvement. This ORD make-over reminds me of what AA (and BA) did with Chelsea, Soho, Greenwich, or the newer Flagship at PHL or newer AC’s like at DCA.
Don’t worry, @George Romey, they’ll get to PHX eventually. Until then, enjoy the tight elevator upstairs at A7, or the tiny, even older one at A21. Better than CLT?
@GUWonder — Why is it that Wingtips is automatically the worst lounge in every airport that has its name… the old Wingtips at JFK T4 was so stingy, they might as well have not even pretended to be part of Priority Pass. Glad Delta took its space for the new D1 lounge.
Unfair to the Citizens of Chicago that United is attempting to monopolize O’Hare Airport, especially since Midway Airport is not capable of handling most of the aircraft utilized by United and American. There should be a healthy competition between United and American at O’Hare to give people a fair choice. United appears very greedy.
A Wingtips still at JFK T4?
I thought they were just STL and ORD nowadays.