June 28, 2022
Why is it that I can no longer count on airport lounge access when I need it most? I admit it is not as weighty a question as Shakespeare posed for his Royal Majesty Richard III regarding his kingdom for a horse in the heat of battle, but it does give me pause in my 62nd year of flying.
After all, since I began weekly flying on business in the 1970s, I’ve been a member of one or more airline or airport lounges. It made sense. Sudden cancellations and long delays have always been a dreary part of commercial aviation, so it didn’t take me long being on the road to realize the value of having a private place to wait out the misery of such events.
Over the decades I paid and paid for access to the Eastern Airlines Ionosphere Club (to which I was a lifetime member—I thought it was for MY lifetime, not Eastern’s), the TWA Ambassador Club, the United Red Carpet Lounge, and the American Airlines Admirals Club. I don’t regret a penny of the expense. It was money well spent.
Sometime in the early 1980s Delta made me a Flying Colonel, which gave me access to then invitation-only Delta Crown Rooms. Now I am a 5.5 million miler in the Delta SkyMiles scheme of things, which makes me a Lifetime Platinum. But neither that nor my old Flying Colonel status cuts any ice with Delta when I turn up at a Delta Sky Club. For entry, Delta only cares about my American Express Platinum Card and day-of-travel boarding pass.
That’s been just fine when flights were on time and connections reasonably short. Delta’s 2022 chaos, however, has meant a flurry of schedule changes, including an itinerary in late August to Ljubljana, Slovenia for me and my wife. We are connecting on Air France (Delta codeshare) through JFK to Paris CDG, and the AF flight leaves at 7:30 PM. Then Delta canceled our afternoon flight RDU/JFK that would have made a three-hour connection and rebooked us on an RDU/JFK flight that arrives in New York at 11:30 AM. That’s an eight-hour connection.
We will be on vacation, so my immediate reaction was that we will just pass the time in the Delta Sky Club. Delta’s recent access limitation of three hours, though, is a bit unclear. It says: “Beginning June 1, 2022, guests will be able to access Delta Sky Clubs anytime within 3 hours of their scheduled departure time (and connecting customers can continue to access Clubs at any time prior to departure).” I figured that meant that even an eight-hour connection will qualify for entry. A call into Delta clarified that, yes, access is assured no matter how long the connection—a big relief.
That got me thinking, however. How long before that rule changes, too? If connecting passengers are likewise restricted, what then? Would we, in this case, have had to wait until 4:30 PM (three hours before our flight) to get in?
Thinking through alternatives, as an Amex Platinum Card holder, my wife and I could use either one of the Priority Pass Clubs in JFK Terminal One or the American Express Centurion Lounge there. But checking my Priority Pass app for allowed lounges gave me pause, as did the Centurion Lounge rules:
- Air France Lounge – open 0945-2230 daily, but access “may be restricted” 1330-2200 due to space constraints. Also restricted to a “maximum 3-hour stay.” Maybe we could stay for three hours and move on—unless it was too crowded to begin with.
- Korean Air Lounge – open only 0830-1200 daily. Wouldn’t meet our needs for an eight-hour wait from 11:30 AM until 7:30 PM.
- Lufthansa Business Lounge – open 0930-2245 daily, which would work, but, again, only for a “maximum 3-hour stay.” Maybe, like the AF lounge, we could stay for three hours and move on, like gypsies.
- Primeclass Lounge – open 0930 until 2330 or 0100 daily, but only for a “maximum 4-hour stay” and “may be restricted due to lounge capacity constraints.”
- Amex Centurion Lounge – open 1130 until 2030, which is perfect for us, but reading on, I see that admittance is only “within 3 hours of the departure time stated on your same-day, confirmed boarding pass.” I’ve been to this lounge, and it’s high-class and super fancy. But not to be enjoyed for more than three hours.
Truth is, who wants to spend even three hours in an airport lounge? Elegant or not, I certainly don’t yearn to. But there will be days when weather delays, ATC slip-ups, airline operation blunders, long layovers, or other complications force us to seek cover in a cloistered and insensitive airport somewhere on the planet. I prefer to know my options before getting to the airport, yet widely varying restrictions on lounge entry make for uncertain strategies.