Category Archives for Lounges.
Pondering this sent me down a rabbit hole, pouring through LA city documents about the upcoming Chase Sapphire Lounge at LAX in the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Ongoing operating costs for the lounge are about $20 million a year. But this one number stood out to me in particular.
I recently flew American Airlines first class between Los Angeles and Sydney with my family. We used the Qantas first class lounges in both cities. I’ve been to both many times, and reviewed them both, so I’ll write about them here together. That makes for a nice opportunity to compare.
This new lounge features ordering of hot items, rather than those being relegated to the buffet. There’s a cheese monger, offering 45-minute cheese tastings with paired wines, and a coffee shop that offers ess-a-bagels baked on premises with lox, pastrami, smoked whitefish and more.
Overall it’s one of the best credit card lounges in the U.S., though, and significantly better than the American Express Centurion lounge. It’s my favorite Chase lounge, edging out New York LaGuardia and San Diego.
I was through Philadelphia on a domestic itinerary, so I decided to redeem a Flagship Lounge single visit pass at the new Flagship lounge there to see what American had launched first-hand over in terminal A West between gates 15 and 16.
Chase’s Phoenix airport lounge will begin taking reservations starting June 23. This is their smallest club at 3,500 square feet and regularly has 30 – 60 minute waits to get in, even with many cardmembers not bothering to try given the crowding and the wait.
29‑year‑old Delta Air Lines passenger Joseph Johnson went straight from the Salt Lake City airport Sky Club to jail after reportedly stealing another passenger’s backpack from the lounge and then trying to seize a police officer’s gun when confronted over the theft.
Capital One is making major changes to lounge access for their Capital One Venture X product – restricted complimentary guests to cardmembers who spend $75,000 per calendar year; adding a fee for authorized user cards to access lounges; and eliminating complimentary Priority Pass guests altogether.
The idea here, I guess, is to shift the burden of homelessness off of society at large and onto airlines and other lounge operators even where those lounges have extremely limited space and too much demand, and they’re expensive to maintain – and lack social services. What could possibly go wrong?
American Airlines will open its new business class Flagship lounge in Philadelphia on Thursday along with the new Admirals Club next door.
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 »
