Amex Lounges Are So Packed, Platinum Members Are Taking Black Card-Only Seats—And Nobody’s Stopping Them

American Express Centurion lounges can have long waits to get it, although the amount of time you’ll expect varies by lounge, day of the week, and weather. Philadephia at peak times has interminable waits because the lounge is so small (and there’s not much great inside, anyway).

(Credit: TravelZork)

(Credit: TravelZork)

We usually don’t see these long lines anymore because digital waitlists have replaced physical queues. However, American Express Centurion (Black Card) cardmembers don’t wait at all. They skip the queue completely, and there’s generally even a separate dedicated check-in line once inside. (Even when it’s your turn to enter the lounge as a Platinum member, there’s still often a line to check in.)

Once inside, Centurion cardmembers have reserved seating. There’s even better champagne behind the bar for them most of the time, although in some lounges better booze is in their separate section of the lounge.

Here’s the reserved section for Centurion cardmembers of the New York JFK lounge. It’s not one of the better space in the lounge. It’s a similar setup in Las Vegas, too.

There’s a discussion on Reddit on ‘just sitting in the Centurion section’. Often nobody will say anything. You’ll see in the JFK lounge photo there’s a stand for an employee who might check credentials, but it’s unmanned. There’s no such setup in many of the other lounges. Some just have reserved signs on tables, but nobody checking.

This doesn’t mean nobody will check on a given visit. Someone reports being kicked out of the Black Card seats in Seattle. And another reports monitoring in Tokyo but Japan is a completely different issue.

You should not sit in the Black Card section if you are not a Black Card customer. That’s simply the deal. If you’re in the lounge because of your Platinum card, you wait in line and you scavenge for tables like the commoner you are.

But it’s a really interesting phenomenon that:

1. this is mostly based on norms and rule-following, and not enforcement
   
2. and that works because most people comply
   
3. which is why a few people can get away with it.

What’s always struck me as odd is that Chase and Capital One lounges don’t offer priority for the best customers. J.P. Morgan Reserve cards are supposed to be limited to private bank customers. Private Bank ostensibly requires a minimum of $10 million on deposit with the bank (in practice you can get in for much less, but the average customer’s balance is much higher). Yet they’ll turn those cardmembers away from lounges.

Capital One doesn’t have an ultra-premium card above Venture X, but they certainly have customers pushing seven figures of spend on cards. It seems like you’d want to make sure they were accommodated the one or two times a year they show up at a Capital One lounge. They’re happy with their Capital One relationship, excited to finally try the lounge, and they learn it’ll be an hour to get in. What does that do to the spend relationship?