Delta Sky Clubs are generally nicer than United’s Clubs and American’s Admirals Clubs, but Delta doesn’t have a separate lounge experience for international business class customers. United Polaris lounges, and American Flagship and Flagship Dining, are superior to what Delta offers to its long haul premium customers.
I written that this appears to be changing. 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.
A Port Authority presentation flags the construction.
The lounge will be 36,000 square feet in the expanded headhouse, built out near Concourse B. (There will also be a new Delta Sky Club in Concourse A.)
If you look at the legend you’ll see the lounge they’re building is only at the end of the B pier. The rest is unrelated construction.
Which makes sense – all the LAX/SFO flights take off from the end of the mainline B pier, and a lot of international on DL.
They wouldn’t build one in the A gates yet – but they are building an extension. Probably to shove more non DL metal to the A side.
The entire presentation is worth highlighting.
A 36K sf Delta One lounge is larger than the current SkyClub on concourse B and will be located closer to the headhouse so in addition to the SkyClub on B and new one on A, Delta is about tripling the amount of premium lounge space at JFK.
The extension of concourse A which involves adding 10 RJ capable gates at the end of concourse A has to be finished by the end of 2022 in order to allow terminal 2 to be torn down.
The first phase of the conversion of the current RJ gates at the end of concourse B to mainline capable gates will also have to occur by the end of 2022
The headhouse of terminal 4 will be enlarged to add one more domestic baggage claim belt, more checkin space including baggage self-tag, and more curb space.
Presumably as terminal 1 is rebuilt, some of the carriers in terminal 4 will move to terminal 1 which will give Delta more widebody gates in time.
The lack of business-class lounges is a major weakness and competitive disAAdvantage for Delta. Delta will need more than two business class lounges to be competitive. Atlanta, Seattle, and Detroit should also have them. It will be interesting to see the access rules and how having these lounges affect the Skymiles program.
36,000sf is about 50% bigger than the huge B Skyclub. That is also bigger than Polaris and Flagship lounges. The Miami Flagship lounge is the largest one by far and is only 29,000sf.
Another glaring Delta disAAdvantage is the inability to use Skymiles for international first class awards. Given the ridiculous number of miles Delta charges for business class, I’d hate to think what a first class award might cost.