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.
The Aria Las Vegas charges guests so much for water that it strikes down a fundamental precept in economics that has held for 150 years. As one guest writes to me, a bottle of water in the room there costs $26!
Delta Air Lines has been slowly rolling out Shake Shack burgers as a pre-order meal choice in domestic first class since late fall. I finally had a chance to try it and was seriously impressed.
I FOIA’d the airport for correspondence with airlines and potential other lounge operators to see what interest there is, matching the airport’s internal plans that I was first to reveal. Here is their responsive material.
United Airlines passengers were greeted with a stark message on their seat back entertainment screens when they boarded a recent flight to Chicago O’Hare. The airline’s message to its customers: BITE ME, or rather every seat back screen showed the greeting: “Welcome aboard flight BITEME1 to Chicago.”
Marriott is eliminating single use plastics when it saves them money toiletries, but they’re placing larger plastic bottles of water that have been shipped using fossil fuels from literally Fiji in every room because those sell for $9. You didn’t believe any of this was really about the environment though, did you?
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.
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 »
