I visited the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge ahead of my United Airlines flight from New York La Guardia and enjoyed a very short but sweet visit. This is a lounge worth stopping at, especially if you are hungry.
Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge New York LaGuardia Review (LGA)
While not as impressive as the beautiful new lounge at SFO, I was very pleased by the quality of this “outstation” Maple Leaf Lounge in New York City.
Access + Hours + Location
This lounge is open to all Star Alliance Gold members traveling on a Star Alliance flight (regardless of destination or cabin of service) and Star Alliance business class travelers. That alone is a huge differential between this lounge and the United Clubs located just a few paces away in the same terminal.
While United restricts MileagePlus Golds, Platinums, and 1Ks from accessing its own lounge except when traveling internationally, this same restriction does not apply to the Air Canada Lounge. So, if you are a United Gold you can access even a domestic flight in economy class. If you are flying business class on a United domestic flight, you can access the Air Canada lounge even though you would be turned away from a United Club.
The lounge is in the beautiful Terminal B Eastern Concourse and open daily from 5:15AM to 12:00AM. You can access up to three hours before your scheduled flight (does not apply to connecting itineraries or in the case of flight delays).
Staff
A really pleasant staff member greeting me at the reception desk, scanned my boarding pass, and welcomed me in. Inside, I noticed that staff were quite busy keeping the buffet clean and tables bussed, which is great appreciated.
Seating
The lounge is located on a terrace overlooking the gate area below it. There is seating centered around a buffet in the middle.
The seating stretches around a corner where there is a lot of empty space but probably not enough to make anything useful out of it.
You’ll find power ports (USB-A and 110-volt) throughout the lounge affixed to the furniture or floors.
Food + Drink
The lounge featured an impressive offering of food and drinks, including a salad bar, salted mixed nuts (the only thing I ate…but I ate a lot), rice, tofu, macaroni and cheese, roasted vegetables, sweet and sour chicken, roasted cauliflower, tomato soup, cookies, and apples.
All beverages were self-serve and the selection included beer, wine, spirits, soft drinks, tea, coffee (horrible machine that Lavazza should be ashamed to pits its name on), and water.
Restrooms
Clean restrooms are available, but no showers.
Business Center
Wireless pricing and copying services are available.
I wish the MLL’s within Canada itself were as nice as their “outstations” at SFO, LGA, FRA, LHR…!
“…if you are hungry.”
I thought you knew me well enough by now to know that I’m always hungry.
Visited Saturday Mar 16 11AM to 1PM. Not busy. Very clean and very nice bathroom facilities. Lunch was soup (Veg and Chick Noodle) and hot items were penne pasta, roasted Veggies, BBQ Chicken, rice, roasted Cauliflower. Adobo Tofu., nothing great but good enough. Drink selection and salad bar looks the same as in photos. No fruit and instead there were some cookies and sweets. Friendly service and well staffed; much better than MLL YYZ Domestic/Transborder.