Tag Archives for centurion lounge.
Lines to get into a Centurion lounge can be just as bad as at a Delta Sky Club. This is what things looked like at 1:45 p.m. on Monday in Las Vegas.
The whole point of an airport lounge is not to wait in the terminal. There’s nothing luxury about queueing.
Some of the variance is based on how much people spend on airports and save in the Centurion lounge. Others value it as an ideal, a real escape from the terminal and good food and drink and what that might retail for.
The problem is that, as I wrote five and a half years ago, Centurion lounges have gotten so busy nobody goes there anymore. The experience rarely measures up to the ideal where you experience peace, a nice meal, and even a spa treatment.
In January 2021 I reported that American Express would open a Centurion lounge at Washington National airport, near the southern end of the B concourse. The entire terminal, with the exception of the A concourse (“banjo”) is connected behind security, so this will be accessible to eligible passengers flying on most airlines (all except Southwest, Frontier, and Air Canada). It’s been more than two and a half years, though, and there’s mostly been crickets.
Last week one of my cousins from Australia was passing through Dallas. He’d been in the Northeast for a few days and didn’t have time to make a visit in Austin, since he needed to make it home for my aunt’s 70th birthday right after being in a wedding. But he booked a long layover, because he was traveling on separate tickets and very badly didn’t want a delay of his first flight to cause him to miss his business class award home. He’d be at DFW airport for about 8 hours, so I agreed to meet him there. I offered that we could leave the airport, but he actually wanted to see all the things. So we decided to make a day of DFW. I caught a 1 p.m. American Airlines flight to DFW.…
America Express has had a huge conundrum with its Centurion lounges. They promote access to acquire premium credit card customers, but customers show up and have a subpar experience because the lounges are too crowded. They’ve been battling this over the past half dozen years and nothing has worked.
American Express has its Centurion lounges, and its smaller ‘Studio Partner’ longes which are Escape Lounges. Previously you could use an American Express Platinum card to access Escape lounges, but they’re now branded by American Express and more cardholders know about the benefit.
Like Centurion lounges, these Centurion Studio lounges have become more crowded.
The American Express Centurion lounge at LAX wasn’t open long, thanks to the pandemic and need for repairs. But the exact nature and timeline of these repairs has remained a mystery until now.
At the start of 2020 the Austin airport was on the verge of getting a new lounge accessible by American Express Platinum cardmembers. But a contracting dispute, the pandemic, and then American Airlines happened.
The Austin airport was supposed to be getting a new lounge accessible by American Express Platinum cardmembers. A contract was set to be awarded right before the pandemic. But the owners of Priority Pass disputed the award, wanting to build their own club. This stalled the process, the award was cancelled, and now the airport says they have no plans to try again.
When you build a nice airport lounge it’s going to be busier than you expect even after accounting for the knowledge that it’s going to be busier than you expect. People come to the airport earlier. They stay longer. They go out of their way to reach the lounge by changing terminals. Add in that the food and drink is actually pretty good in American Express Centurion lounges and they’ve become so busy nobody goes there anymore.
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 »
