Category Archives for Lounges.
The Chase Sapphire Lounge Phoenix is America’s tiniest premium bank lounge, seating just 78—but there’s a clever trick to bypass the usual wait.
Capital One Landing New York LaGuardia opens next week, and it instantly becomes the best airport dining experience in America. With dazzling design, runway and skyline views, and dishes you’d expect from a Michelin-starred restaurant, this new space makes airport lounges seem second-rate.
Airport food is mostly mediocre — but lounge food usually isn’t the upgrade people imagine, especially in lounges you can access with just a credit card. In practice the buffet often trails what you can buy in the terminal, and the few places that buck the trend are exceptions that prove the rule.
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.
A Delta Sky Club worker at LAX is seeking class action status in a lawsuit claiming employees should be paid for time spent waiting in TSA screening before they can reach their workplace. But TSA screening is controlled by the government, not Delta (or Compass) so even California law makes treating federally-mandated security as paid work time likely.
Capital One has signed a lease for a new lounge at Charlotte, and at roughly 14,000 square feet it would be the biggest Capital One Lounge yet. The space will sit on the mezzanine of the Concourse A expansion with tarmac views, locally inspired food, a full-service coffee bar, and work areas—though with only a concessions agreement in place, an opening likely isn’t soon.
She got an Amex Platinum because she’d heard airport lounges were where you “network with rich people”—then walked into a room full of travelers eating, scrolling, and napping. Her verdict: “0 connections were made,” a neat reminder that credit-card lounge access isn’t exclusivity, and most people behind that door are just trying to kill time before boarding.
A flight delay sent one American Airlines passenger to the Flagship Lounge at DFW for a quick shower. When they finished, they returned the key, said “thank you,” and started walking away—until the employee stopped them cold: “Where is the tip?”
Photos from Delta’s Sky Club in Atlanta Terminal F show a coffee dispenser/thermal server so grimy that “skip the coffee” feels like rational advice. Even if it’s just insulation foam in a non-food-contact cavity, it shouldn’t look like this in active service—and if seals fail, contamination risk gets real fast.
I got into the Capital One Lounge at DFW quickly, but the experience felt noticeably different: the grab n go area was closed and items were only available “on request,” while the hot food lineup was weaker than what I remember from early visits. The company says a temporary maintenance issue is to blame, but the overall drift—less selection and less polish—has been showing up more than once.
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 »
