Category Archives for Lounges.
Some of you will be sure that American Airlines treated me this well ‘because I’m a blogger’ or something like that. Believe me I do not receive special treatment from American Airlines. For several years I’ve been unpopular enough among certain members of senior management that I’m surprised I still have an AAdvantage account.
With travel’s return Delta is having trouble. Here’s the new Detroit A43 club – at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday. Contra American Airlines there are no lines to get in, just passengers being told to go away. This isn’t a one-off, they have a pre-made banneer to put out.
The American Airlines Flagship Lounge New York JFK is fantastic – a great space with great food and friendly people – and a reason to show up a little bit early for your flight.
The American Express Centurion lounge at LAX wasn’t open long, thanks to the pandemic and need for repairs. But the exact nature and timeline of these repairs has remained a mystery until now.
Step inside American Airlines Flagship First Dining at New York JFK and you’ll forget for a moment that this is an airline’s lounge. You’d even forget you’re at the airport, except for the floor to ceiling glass views over the tarmac. The space is serene. The service is excellent. And they’re serving food you’d be happy to eat in a nice restaurant.
It’s even better than when it first opened, and reasonably draws comparisons to first class offerings from Lufthansa in Frankfurt and Air France in Paris.
Turkish Airlines offers one of the very best business class lounges at its home airport in Instanbul, complete with library, billiards area, and golf simulator. Now they have a new feature: virtual flight simulator. It’s called the “Hezarfen Flight Simulator Experience” after the first person in Turkish aviation history to take flight.
The main Admirals Club in Charlotte is closed for renovations. Some travelers had hopes this would mean improving the club, still in US Airways-style, but it doesn’t. American – which has been somewhat cagey about the work that’s happening – says the updates which will take several months are about bringing the space up to fire code.
Here are permitting details for what renovations will actually be taking place.
The Star Alliance lounge at LAX is no longer limited to business and first class passengers and Star Gold elites on Star Alliance airline flights (and other airline eligible passengers such as Air Tahiti Nui passengers in business class). Instead, you can now pay for access to the lounge.
For many years Chase operated a pop up lounge around at the holidays for United Explorer cardmembers at the Mall at Short Hills, New Jersey. They wanted to be where there customers are.
Coming soon is a network of Chase airport lounges co-branded with Collinson’s The Club, the same company that brings you Priority Pass. But before we see the opening of the first Chase airport lounge, the bank has opened a lounge in the Metaverse..
oneworld lounge access rules provide business class lounge access for business class passengers flying any airline in the alliance. Qantas is using first class lounges as business class lounges, but haven’t renamed those lounges as business lounges so they’re excluded. Hopefully they’ll fully re-open lounges as their international route network restarts – and as partner airlines rebuild their Australia schedules as well.
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 »
