Chase Will Lose Its Austin Airport Lounge In March

I covered all of the airport lounge moving pieces at the Austin airport like plans for all airlines to move to different spaces, and to add credit card and common use lounges, as new construction finishes.

However the most immediate change deserves to be pulled out separately: the Chase Sapphire Terrace will go away “March 2025” with the space opening back up to the public according to an airport presentation.

A year and a half ago Chase opened its Sapphire Terrace at the Austin airport. This took the public use outdoor courtyard upstairs at the east end of the concourse, beside the Delta Sky Club, and turned it into a private use space for Chase Sapphire Reserve and J.P. Morgan Reserve cardmembers (with no Priority Pass option).

It is a mostly-outdoor space that’s stylish, but subject to the vagaries of weather. The indoor space is cramped with little seating, but features beer and soft drinks as well as complimentary vended packaged food.

This was always intended as temporary. Use of the space will cease in March 2025, according to the presentation, and it will revert to public use.

Chase now has experience in the airport, and an airport relationship, so strikes me as a front-runner to take one of the spaces that becomes available in the coming years.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. Makes sense. AUS isn’t the market for a premium lounge like this. AUS boomed with people who failed in more expensive cities and couldn’t make it there.

    This casually, like AA drawing down AUS, is yet another casualty of businesses not understand domestic migration patterns. Someone who’s going to drop several hundred dollars on an annual fee for a premium credit card isn’t the same person who couldn’t figure out how to pay market rent in an expensive city and has to uproot their life and flee to a city with cheaper housing like AUS.

  2. Uncle Jeff, congratulations on perhaps one of the most retarded comments this website has ever seen. Because yes, Elon Musk and other high skill employers are flocking to Austin because of mediocre burnouts. Piss off.

  3. Oh no! What will all of the overentitled tech bros do now when they’ve being “world travelers” while pretending to work? Before long they’ll actually be made to go back into a real office.

  4. Uncle Jeff is that creepy uncle who got ousted from his own city for pedophilia accusations. Austin is a city of growth and prosperity. We left our “elite” city because it’s run by criminals and crooks. Austin is where it’s at

  5. Uncle Jeff, sweetie, maybe don’t make comments when you don’t have much of an understanding. Austin is the most expensive city in Texas. All those tech bros who failed? They certainly don’t come here. The reason this lounge is closing is because the airport is under construction to double in size. And sitting out in a terrace in the hot, blazing sun with the smell of diesel everywhere is not a premium experience. It was built as a temporary lounge to tide people over. Austin is not a “connecting flight” airport; that would be Dallas or Houston. The need for lounges is really only for departing passengers.

  6. Uncle Jeff I can only assume is a Bay Area snob pissed that all the high tech jobs are leaving the shit hole that is SF. I moved to Austin about 3 years ago to work for Apple and work with many highly skilled and well paid engineers. Austin is exponentially better than SCV/Bay Area, more affordable, better food, culture, regulatory climate, basically everything that sucks about CA doesn’t suck in TX. Sorry you don’t like Austin but I think those of us who don’t want to be ripped off paying insane amounts for rent or mortgage are the smart ones!

  7. Grandpa Jeff – food selection? Cold from a vending machine that as often as not was mostly empty?

    Robert and Uncle – two untalented hacks who have no idea what the tech industry actually is doing in Austin.

    As far as the “lounge” closing, no great loss. It never opened up early enough in the day to be useful to morning travellers – ironically, the only time of day when it would actually be “cool” enough to enjoy the outside – and it was the saddest excuse for an airport lounge at Austin if not the entire country.

  8. I was in the lounge last week. It’s moving to a different location in the airport NOT closing – as per the employees working there.

  9. It was useless. Tommy for two people to sit inside, outside was brutally hot. Vending machine food? In Austin? Please…

  10. I wasn’t fond of the setup of the current Chase lounge, but I really do hope they set up a Chase lounge very soon elsewhere in AUS. It’s one of the main reasons for me to not switch to Amex platinum.

  11. Uncle Jeff. Au contraire cave dweller. Austin does offer both high rent and affordable housing. Though unlike California, instead of having to drive 1-2 hours each way to/from work for affordable housing, in Austin one only needs to drive about 59 minutes.

  12. What’s tha point? You’re OUTSIDE, and still can’t smoke a damn cigarette!
    IRRELEVANT!
    #nextcaaaase

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