Airlines sometimes miss that the key question for a lounge isn’t “are there enough seats for passengers?” but “is there enough space and enough empty seats so the lounge doesn’t feel full?”

If a lounge feels just as packed as the gate area, it isn’t a peaceful escape from the terminal. I’ve been to too many lounges that feel like refugee camps during peak times. You have to hunt for a place to sit. Staff can’t keep up with the turnover and trash piles up. Food and drink go unreplenished.

It isn’t just about the fact that there is a lounge, or what services that lounge offers. A premium cabin lounge should feel exclusive and peaceful.

Frequently I take Yogi Berra’s somewhat apocryphal advice that “it’s too crowded nobody goes there” and I just skip the lounge.

When I visited United’s Chicago O’Hare Polaris lounge in February I thought it was shockingly lovely. The design gorgeous, the features rich, and the food good.

Ultimately my reaction to the lounge was, this is United?? It’s gorgeous and it’s well-provisioned, with services you’d expect in a very nice international airline’s lounge but not so much from a domestic carrier.

However I also said, “I’d enjoy it the most midday rather than during peak afternoon transatlantic departure times, just because I really enjoy a lounge that isn’t overwhelmed with people and it certainly can fill up.”

United claimed at the time to me “that guests haven’t actually ever exceeded lounge capacity” yet I still worried “about people overrunning the lounge at peak European departure times.”

Indeed United is effectively acknowledging the issue because they’re expanding the lounge.

[T]he space devoted to the lounge in Concourse C of Terminal 1 at O’Hare is proving too small to adequately handle the crush of Polaris-ticketed passengers seeking to use the lounge during peak international flight departure times in the early morning and late afternoon. …

Consequently, to deal with the Polaris lounge overcrowding, the airline has decided to expand the Polaris lounge’s footprint by taking over a portion of the Concourse C United Club located immediately adjacent to the Polaris lounge.

The Chicago Business Journal also notes:

• The Polaris lounge expansion should be completed by the end of the year.

• The renovated O’hare C16 United Club should open “in early 2018”

• But since the Polaris lounge will encroach on the C16 club’s space, it’s likely to shift the crowding to the paid club side.

• The San Francisco and Newark Polaris lounges should open “by year’s end.”

• American’s Chicago O’Hare Flagship lounge will be 17,000 square feet (versus 15,000 for the current Polaris lounge, and American’s lounge should serve fewer passengers) and may open as soon as September.