Category Archives for Lounges.
Over the summer I told you about indications of improved business class check-in and a business class lounge planned for LAX. Now there’s leaks out of the Port Authority of New York New Jersey about a planned Delta One lounge at New York JFK. Delta appears to be matching Untied and American with a dedicated business class lounge product.
The Ethiopian Airlines lounge at the carrier’s home airport in Addis Ababa has some basic rules. You cannot bring outside food in the lounge (for cleanliness) and you cannot take food out of the lounge (for cost). Don’t put your feet up on the furniture and – sadly this needs to be said – don’t lie down on the floor.
What’s unique is that they’ll penalize your frequent flyer account for breaking these rules.. It’s 2000 miles for a first offense, 5000 miles for a second offense, and dropping your elite status down to Silver for 6 months as a third offense.
Before the pandemic I wrote about how Charlotte desperately needed another American Airlines Admirals Club – or two. American had scaled to 900 flights a day at DFW – and opened a 5th club. Charlotte was up to 700 flights and had just two clubs. And the terminal itself is more crowded than Dallas.
Starting in January Charlotte is going to be down to a single Admirals Club as the main one closes for maintenance and American stands up a ‘passenger service center’ to help with ticketing.
Earlier this year we learned that Chase is launching its own airport lounge network in collaboration with Airport Dimensions, a Collinson company which brings you Priority Pass and The Club lounges.
We now know about 4 lounges in the pipeline.
I had the opportunity to visit the very first Capital One airport lounge at Dallas – Fort Worth on Wednesday, a couple of weeks before opening. This is a great space, really thoughtfully designed with a lot of details built-in. They’ve invested a lot, and what impressed me most was the food which wasn’t just ‘good for an airport lounge’ but genuinely good. I’m hoping it scales and is sustainable, because you’re going to want to check it out.
The Houston airport C1 club did one thing that made all the difference.
The Austin airport was supposed to be getting a new lounge accessible by American Express Platinum cardmembers. A contract was set to be awarded right before the pandemic. But the owners of Priority Pass disputed the award, wanting to build their own club. This stalled the process, the award was cancelled, and now the airport says they have no plans to try again.
When you build a nice airport lounge it’s going to be busier than you expect even after accounting for the knowledge that it’s going to be busier than you expect. People come to the airport earlier. They stay longer. They go out of their way to reach the lounge by changing terminals. Add in that the food and drink is actually pretty good in American Express Centurion lounges and they’ve become so busy nobody goes there anymore.
A kangaroo once walked into an airport pharmacy in Australia and also hopped down the aisle of an American Airlines flight so it shouldn’t come as a terrible surprise to see a monkey sidling up to the bar in one of the lounge at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Although passengers in the lounge were certainly surprised to see the monkey take a drink of fruit juice, and not tip the bartender.
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 »
