Tag Archives for admirals club.
Some of you will be sure that American Airlines treated me this well ‘because I’m a blogger’ or something like that. Believe me I do not receive special treatment from American Airlines. For several years I’ve been unpopular enough among certain members of senior management that I’m surprised I still have an AAdvantage account.
With only the smaller B concourse club available for passengers to spend time in while waiting for flights, it’s become overrun. While there have been some members talking about a ‘wait list’ to get in, an American Airlines spokesperson explains, “a representative manages the line outside of the Admirals Club. The rep will let guests in as others leave. First come first serve for our members.”
Before the pandemic I wrote about how Charlotte desperately needed another American Airlines Admirals Club – or two. American had scaled to 900 flights a day at DFW – and opened a 5th club. Charlotte was up to 700 flights and had just two clubs. And the terminal itself is more crowded than Dallas.
Starting in January Charlotte is going to be down to a single Admirals Club as the main one closes for maintenance and American stands up a ‘passenger service center’ to help with ticketing.
American Airlines and the Austin airport are announcing plans for a new Admirals Club near gate 14 that’s twice the size of the current club.
The cheapest way for many people to get access to American Airlines clubs is with the premium Citibank co-brand AAdvantage Executive card. It has a $450 annual fee and comes with membership. What’s more, additional cardholders have no fee and can use the card for entry including inviting two guests. You can get 10 additional cards, so with a total of 11 cards that’s 33 total admits.
But there’s a cheaper way, even, to get this card.
If an airline’s agents can’t make sense of a policy it is probably too complicated a policy.
Two birds walk into the Philadelphia airport Admirals Club bar. They sit down and the first bird asks the bartender, “you got any bread?” The Admirals Club bartender replies, “No, sorry.”
The second bird then asks, “Have you got any bread?” And the bartender starts getting angry: “we haven’t got any bread, what do you think this is a Delta Sky Club?”
American Airlines said last month that all Admirals Clubs except Honolulu were said to re-open ‘by August’ while Flagship lounges and First Dining would begin with Miami in September.
American now tells me they’ve already re-opened 35 of 40 Admirals Clubs. The five that are still closed will open in August.
American Airlines is re-opening its Flagship international business class lounges and most of its Flagship First Dining this fall, starting with Miami. They’re also re-opening all of their Admirals Clubs except Honolulu this summer. And they’re going to introduce a new way for premium passengers to access Flagship.
That’s wonderful because these lounges were fantastic. United’s Polaris lounges were probably a step above American’s Flagship lounges, but Flagship lounges were open to many more people and nicer than anything American had ever done before. American’s Flagship First Dining product was nicer than anything any U.S. airline has done in recent years, period.
Two premium services updates: American Airlines has no plans to return meal service up front to the way it was before the pandemic, instead working on “meaningful changes.” There are, however, 3 Admirals Clubs that will re-open in the next month.
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 »
