Amex New Centurion Rules Target Guests and Layovers — But Crowding Won’t Change Without Entry Caps

American Express is tightening Centurion Lounge access again — targeting guests who are not on the same flight and limiting long connection layovers to five hours. It sounds like a crackdown, but it misses the real driver of the lines: too many cardmembers with effectively unlimited entry relative to lounge capacity, so crowding won’t change until access is capped.

Lounge crowding has been a problem for ages, even if it accelerated post-pandemic. People spent more time in airports because of the shift towards leisure travel versus managed business and increasing variance in wait times at security leading to passengers showing up at the airport earlier. The number of people with premium credit cards offering access has also grown markedly.

Back in 2018 I wrote that I often just skipped Centurion lounges because they’d gotten so busy.

And of course the lines to get into Delta Sky Clubs, especially at places like New York JFK before the opening of a second club, a Delta One lounge and a Centurion lounge in terminal 4 (not to mention a Chase and Capital One lounge) were so bad – something akin to refugee camps – that Delta had taken to offering sustenance to people waiting in the lines to get in.

We’ve seen various efforts ostensibly meant to limit crowding, none of which have worked.

• No free guests (often unless you spend at least $75,000 annual on a card) that was American Express’s play mirrored by Capital One.
  
• Fewer cards able to pay-in for access, or elimination of limited annual entries.
  
• No access until 3 hours prior to flight (this has become standard for credit card lounges)
  
• Limited number of annual entries (Delta Reserve)
  
• Restriction from entering when traveling on the cheapest fares (Delta)
  
• Requirement to have a seat assignment on your boarding pass. This keeps out nonrevs. But it’s also confused some lounge staff, who have kept out Southwest passengers in the past (this is one thing that Southwest’s move to paid assigned seats solves for).

American Express is back with plans for additional restrictions.

• Guests must be on the same flight as the cardholder whether the guests are free based on $75,000 annual spend, or paid.
  
• Connecting passengers can’t enter more than 5 hours prior to departure. Capital One and Chase have 3-hour prior to departure rules even on connecting flights, while American Express has only applied its 3-hour rule to the first flight on an itinerary rather than connections. Amex is moving to a 5-hour rule for connections.

The exact start date of these new rules hasn’t been announced, other than to say they’ll go into effect mid-2026. I do not expect them to make any material difference in crowding.

The drivers of crowding are:

• Too many cards relative to lounge capacity. And in Delta’s case, that it’s not just Delta Reserve cardmembers with access but every Amex Platinum customer flying Delta.
  
• A relatively limited percentage of cardmembers who are power users

Issuers aren’t going to restrict applications because they can’t deliver on promised benefits, which means if they were serious about dealing with lounge crowding, and thus the degradation in the lounge experience, they’d be forced to deal with unlimited access in some way. For instance,

• Limit each cardmember to a specific (low) number of entries per year, perhaps allowing unlimited entry only to high spenders or allowing cardmembers to redeem points for additional entry.

• Allowing high spenders to have priority on the waitlist. Give each cardmember perhaps two ‘fast passes’ per year, so they can actually get into the lounge when it matters most to them, and allow points redemptions for more or earning more at various spend thresholds.

By the way, enforcement of rules around entry times prior to departure varies in my experience and often isn’t ‘hard’ – show up 3 hours 15 minutes prior to departure and many lounges will still let you in (though not every employee at every lounge). It’s also important, by the way, to screen shot your boarding pass. Some airlines, like Southwest, update times on boarding passes (without retaining display of original time) when a flight is delayed. That can keep you out of the lounge!

At the end of the day there’s nothing premium about an hour’s wait to get into the lounge, or a packed space where you’re zigging and zagging around people once you’re inside.