We need to talk about the decline in American Express Centurion lounges. They were once great. They aren’t any longer – they aren’t as good as they used to be, and both Capital One and Chase offerings are better.

Back when American Express negotiated their first lease at the Dallas – Fort Worth airport, American Airlines objected. Centurion lounges drove competition and raised the standard. Airline lounges upped their game.

Amex lounge food was good. The Dean Fearing brisket in Dallas was delicious. The spaces had a premium feel, and the food even looked good.

When New York LaGuardia was opened the partner chef was Cedric Vongerichten of Perry Street restaurant in New York (son of Jean Georges). San Francisco opened with Christopher Kostow, three Michelin star chef of Napa’s The Restaurant at Meadowood. The food was something their chef partners could be proud of back then.

Chef Christopher Kostow at San Francisco Centurion Lounge Opening Event

Since then they have closed the spas. The food is no longer good. The design has aged.

I don’t see beef much these days. Overcooked pasta in big vats just doesn’t have the same appeal as the premium buffets American Express offered when these lounges were new.

Card annual fees have gone up and you have less access – no more free guests, you can no longer enter more than 3 hours prior to flight – yet those changes didn’t reduce crowding because they kept minting more cards and even added access to Delta Reserve cards which meant useing Centurion lounges to relieve crowding in Sky Clubs.

Now we have Chase lounges and Capital One lounges and those are better! Ironically their premium cards have lower annual fees than Amex Platinum. I still keep my Platinum, because I get more value from the coupon book than the fee and it gives me access to these lounges and Delta’s lounges when I fly Delta. But I don’t use Centurion lounges often even when they’re an option.

I choose the American Airlines Admirals Club on Washington National’s E Concourse over the American Express Centurion lounge at that airport, even though both entail walks to American Airlines mainline gates.

American Airlines Admirals Club, DCA E Concourse

The food in many Delta lounges is better than in Centurion lounges.

By 2018 I wrote that Centurion lounges are so busy, nobody goes there anymore. There will often be queues to get into the lounges. This was 1:45 p.m. on a Monday in Las Vegas (the Las Vegas lounge check-in agents told me how much they were looking forward to the opening of the Capital One lounge, hoping it would reduce the queues).

Credit: TravelZork

Credit: TravelZork

The whole point of an airport lounge is not to wait in the terminal. There’s nothing luxury about queueing. I have a Platinum card. It pays for itself with credits against spending I would do anyway. And sometimes it’s useful for lounge access I wouldn’t have otherwise.

However, Delta for years has promoted the idea that ‘when everyone’s elite, nobody is.’ When there are so many cardmembers traveling through airports that there are lines to get into their lounges, the lounges cannot in any way be considered ‘elite’.

When American Express first opened Centurion lounges, the food was fantastic and lounges weren’t overrun. Not everyone had discovered them yet. There weren’t as many cardmembers. Those managing the budgets hadn’t quite anticipated that when you open a nice lounge, more people will show up, stay longer, and eat more. They were producing food at a smaller scale and with what seemed like a bigger budget per head.

Back then there were no limits on how far in advance you could arrive at a Centurion lounge, and no lines to get in.

Credit card premium lounges are a victim of their own success, attracting more customers (which detracts from the experience) and driving up costs (which lead to cutbacks in the experience). And a decade on even the design feels dated.