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Home » Ethiopian Airlines » Misbehave In Lounge? You’ll Lose Your Miles And Elite Status
Ethiopian Airlines

Misbehave In Lounge? You’ll Lose Your Miles And Elite Status

Matthew Klint Posted onDecember 20, 2021November 14, 2023 7 Comments

a room with plants and a television

Ethiopian Airlines is taking a novel approach to encouraging good behavior in its airport lounge: follow the rules or you’ll lose your miles and your status.

Ethiopian Airlines Threatens To Confiscate Miles, Reduce Status For Poor Behavior In Airport Lounge

Over the weekend, Sean Mendis, an airline executive in Africa who is one of the best sources of aviation knowledge that I know, shared a couple pictures from his recent visit to Ethiopian Airlines Sheba Platinum & Gold Lounge at Addis Ababa Airport (ADD). It includes fairly commonplace rules (though perhaps not the third one):

  • Bringing outside food or taking out food is not allowed
  • It is not allowed to remove food leftovers, beverages or periodicals from the lounge
  • Unpacking or repacking commercial items in the lounges is strictly prohibited
  • Laying down on the floor, sofas or resting your feet on the tables is not allowed for the sake of other customers and the cleanliness of the lounges and the furniture therein as well

But then it lists a fascinating “corrective actions to be taken in violation of the above terms and conditions.”

  • First offense will entail a reduction of 2,000 miles
  • Second offense will entail a reduction of 5,000 miles
  • Third offense will entail downgrading of tier level to a Silver tier for six months

There’s also a catch-all warning:

Ethiopian…reserves the right to to ask clients behaving inappropriately or who fail to comply with the above rules to leave the lounge.

a sign with text on it

Goodness, the way I remove pre-packaged snacks from United Clubs would mean I’d lose my miles and status fairly quickly.

But I do sort of like this approach. Certainly for boisterous behavior.

By the way, I’ve reviewed the Ethiopian Cloud Nine lounge in Addis Ababa before and if the Platinum and Gold lounges are similar, this is a particularly punitive penalty for a very mediocre lounge.

CONCLUSION

Ethiopian Airlines is taking a novel approach to combating poor behavior and poor etiquette in its airport lounges. While I like the concept of the approach, I’m not sure such an arrangement would ever work in the USA…though it would be an easy way for airlines to reduce their mileage liabilities, at least according to a lot of the conduct I have seen over the years.

images: Sean Mendis / Twitter

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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7 Comments

  1. David Reply
    December 20, 2021 at 11:39 am

    ET has new lounges in the new terminal. They are quite nice, especially the business class lounge, complete with showers.

  2. PolishKnight Reply
    December 20, 2021 at 11:58 am

    I’ll confess: When I was in Switzerland 2 decades back, I filled my backpack with goodies from the lounge and survived on them for a good week. I think my behavior was probably uncommon at the time.

    But imagine if a lounge sees this regularly, they will feel a need to make a rule against it.

    Similar with Costco which at one time had a very generous return policy but I know some who abused it so egregiously they ruined it for the rest of us. In one case I know of personally, the guy would buy a big screen TV, use it for a year, and then box it up, return, and get another, newer model.

  3. Sean M. Reply
    December 20, 2021 at 12:12 pm

    These are the brand new lounges in the new terminal that opened in 2020. A whole different situation than the previous dire lounge experiences.

    • Matthew Klint Reply
      December 20, 2021 at 2:10 pm

      Good to know!

  4. Dave Edwards Reply
    December 20, 2021 at 3:39 pm

    “Bringing outside food is not allowed”. Didn’t throw they actually had food there.

    “Taking out food is not allowed”. So it’s ok for the kids to starve like they do there?

    What an inconsiderate story about an airline that should care more about its people instead of surviving off the corrupt government that allows its kids to starve to death at the highest rate in the world.

    • Norris Lee Reply
      December 20, 2021 at 10:32 pm

      @ Dave: You are an absolute, total, ignorant moron. If you are just trolling for kicks, it’s even more pathetic than actually believing what you wrote–and that’s tough to beat.

  5. emercycrite Reply
    December 27, 2021 at 9:52 pm

    This is an excellent system of penalties.

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