Atlanta’s airport has selected American Express to build a new Centurion lounge over rival bids from Airport Dimensions (Collinson, which owns Priority Pass and The Club lounges) and Plaza Premium group. The Atlanta city council’s finance committee is expected to approve the 10 year lease with two 5 year renewal options today.
It’s unclear where the lounge will be located, though city documents will certainly reveal this. And it’s not clear what the construction (and opening) timeline looks like.
What’s interesting to me is that American Express is building another Centurion lounge in a major Delta hub. They build New York JFK accessible to Delta passengers, and the Washington National facility will be close to Delta gates as well.
Initially Centurion lounges were built out at airports where American Express lacked a lounge partner. They rolled out these lounges as they lost their own lounge partners like Continental and then US Airways and American.
More recently they’ve been supplementing Delta lounges, and adding Centurion access as a benefit of the premium Delta credit card tied to Delta ticket purchase and travel.
(HT: Danny Deal Guru)
Already reading reports of overcrowding.
Yeah, this is a terrible idea for what’s left of Amex’s lounge reputation on overcrowding, unless they make this thing yuuuuuuuuge.
@ Gary — This is welcome news considering the only non-DL international departure lounge in ATL (serving airlines like LH, QR, TK, BA) is a pathetic overcrowded joke. The lounge sucks so much that I would rather wait in the terminal. We used to would have used the DL lounge, a membership to which we purchased with cash, but DL chose to steal our PAID access from us long ago.
Great, more Airport-Americans to ruin the experience.
ATL could use two Amex Centurion lounges.
I’d like to make my reservation now for my 2023 travel year. I waited 30 minutes to get into the DFW centurian last week when we’re still nowhere near full capacity for travel. ATL?! I wonder if they’ll take online reservations and how far in advance.