Do Airport Lounges Really Suck?

Do Airport Lounges Really Suck?

By Robert McGarvey

Do airport lounges suck? That’s the assertion of Erika Ho, a writer at Map Happy and a onetime TIME reporter  Her exact words: “The lounge actually kinda sucks.”

She elaborated: “In fact, they’re so bad that once my upgrades started clearing on a regular basis (and the novelty wore off), I stopped going to the lounge entirely before my flight. It was a better use of my time to get extra shut-eye, pick up food at the grocery store for the flight or do ANYTHING except spend more time at the airport.”

She continued: “Most of the time, while snacks and basic drinks are free in a lounge, most travelers will be hard-pressed to even find some Milanos lying around these days.”

You know what? She’s right.  I am an immense fan of Amex’s Centurion Lounge and, especially when flying to/from Las Vegas, I have been known to stop in on both legs of the trip, usually for a quick lunch of Scott Conant’s still tasty food.

But often I just don’t bother with an airline lounge anymore.

If I have free passes to the United Club I’ll use them if a club is convenient to the gate.  I’ll grab a Wall Street Journal – assuming any are available and often they aren’t – and maybe a mediocre cup of coffee.  If the club is too far from the gate, nowadays I’ll pass, even with a free pass in my wallet.

I have Priority Pass via Amex and, if a lounge is convenient, I’ll sometimes use it. But it has to be convenient. And of course it is free with Priority Pass.  

Ho also made the point that – considering the better stuff is on sale inside airline lounges – why not just pop into a comfy airport wine bar or saloon and most airports now have multiple choices, some pretty good. Yes, you will pay but you would probably pay inside the airline club for decent hooch. And the bar run by bar people pretty much always is a better experience than an airline lounge.

That point is all the more valid when you are faced with paying $50 for entry to a lounge – when you can saunter into the comfy wine bar for free, especially if you buy a glass of red. Probably you would never pay $50 to get into a lounge. But I have seen people, on just about every trip nowadays, shelling out cash to get in.

I have no idea what they think they are getting for their money.

Ho, by the way, is not alone in saying lounges suck. The blogger at Flights and Frustration said exactly this: “The lounges which give me frustration more than any other are those in the mainland United States. Yes, the airport lounge clubs in the US suck.”

Not to pile on, but Vane Airport threw more gasoline on this fire.  “Airport lounges are not oases of calm, peace and reflection,” said this writer. Point taken.  Particularly at prime times – say 8:30 am or 4:30 pm – just about every seat will be taken, the lounge will be noisy, probably the WiFi will be slow, and, said Vane Airport about a personal experience, “the [lounge] was crowded, noisy and the chairs were crammed together and very uncomfortable. And the food was worse.”

The Flights and Frustration blogger, after itemizing the many failures of US lounges, sighed, “I’m not sure that I want lounge club access anymore.”

Ouch.

But I cannot disagree.

Understand, too, what’s said here applies to domestic lounges. I have been to marvelous lounges in Europe and I understand (tho I have never been inside) the ones in Asia are better still.

In the US, though, the only rational way to get in an airline lounge is free and even then it may not be worth the bother. If there’s a convenient Centurion Lounge, count me in. Otherwise,  increasingly I find myself buying a decent coffee at Starbucks, grabbing a seat at the gate, creating a WiFi hotspot on my phone, and getting to work, right at the gate.

Noisy? Sure. But so’s the club.

But my hotspot is a lot more secure than any public WiFi network including a lounge’s.

And the coffee is a lot better.