A headline in The Telegraph makes a bold assertion: the middle class has ruined airport lounges. Is there any merit to this charge?
Don’t Blame Middle Class For Subpar Airport Lounge Experience…
Here is how The Telegraph summarizes the problem:
Airport lounges were, once upon a time, the exclusive domain of the premium-class flier. Now there are many reasons why lesser mortals might have access. Credit cards like American Express’s Platinum Card offer it as a perk, regular fliers can buy annual passes, and even occasional travellers can often pay a one-off fee to secure a few hours of luxury before their departure.
The inevitable problem with this democratisation of airport lounges is that these once-serene spaces have become oversubscribed, undermining their very purpose. With the situation worsened by staffing issues, many are now turning away customers who arrive more than three hours before their scheduled departure, shrinking the window for relaxing pre-flight cocktails and canapes.
Indeed, the problem is that demand greatly exceeds supply. Credit card companies (and your favorite bloggers) hawk credit cards that include access, but this become theoretical when you are turned away at a lounge due to overcrowding.
> Read More: What Is The Value Of A Lounge That Is So Crowded You Cannot Enter It?
A few thoughts.
While we can pinpoint certain bottlenecks, like the American Express Centurion lounges in Las Vegas or the Delta SkyClubs at New York JFK, I am thankful the problem is not predictably widespread. I never have trouble finding a seat in the United Club at LAX or at most line stations (Denver is a mother story…). The point is that many of the lounge crowding issues are airport-specific and that leaves hope that those specific problems will be addressed.
Second, blaming the middle class is great for an attention-grabbing headline, but we must lay the blame where the blame is due: on the credit card companies. They are the ones who are pushing cards with lounge access that reasonable middle class people sign up for, including me. Plus, lounge operators agree to these deals knowing full well that demand may outstrip supply.
Third, these credit cards are still worthwhile. Cards like the American Express Platinum, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Capital One Venture cards offer a host of benefits and crowded lounges do not eliminate the value proposition that makes those cards more valuable than the annual fee.
My friend Gilbert Ott, from God Save The Points, is quoted extensively in the article. He complains about the quality control of these lounges, lamenting, “These pay-as-you-go lounges are a fundamentally flawed business model. I think it’s insane.”
I have to wonder whether we are the insane ones. After all, we are the ones who show up early at the airport or brave lounge queues longer than at the security checkpoint for a few morsels of food or a cold drink.
Then again, I value a lounge precisely for a snack and drink if I show up to the airport ahead of my flight.
CONCLUSION
Is it the middle class that is crowding lounges? Sure. There are more of us and we like good deals. But I would not blame the middle class for a problem that credit card companies and lounge operators have created by issuing so many cards that lounges cannot keep up. The solution may be the continued cutting of access and card benefits, but don’t blame people for that.
Stock photo definitely on point, Matthew 😉
Seriously… What does cleavage have to do with lounge overcrowding?
Eye Candy !!
We Americans can also never stop eating/pass up free food so that might play a role in it…
Gods forbid anyone should impinge on a rich person’s lounge experience! LMAO.
I can’t imagine what motivates people to stand in line for a lounge. Unless you have a long layover and theres no ability to leave the airport, and you need a shower, there is nothing in there that is worth standing in line for. Last time in LAS the line for the amex lounge was about 30 people long so I went to Quiznos instead, and I don’t feel like I missed anything. I’d be surprised if any of those people were on a layover.
Put a Golden Corral in every airport and the lounges will be empty again
Lounge access became a “status symbol”. I see many people using that as a show off moment. People love to say they were at the lounge. Its hard to say who is who in a lounge but I certainly see people there that makes me scratch my head. For example, families with several kids. That is not a “one credit card”. Someone had to pay to get all those kids in the lounge. When my kids were not old enough to have their own credit card the only time we would go to a lounge was on international trips which we usually fly business class. I never ever paid for my kids to access a lounge to eat crackers and drink soda. But some people do. I would say that basically everyone that I know that flies Delta have a credit card that gives them access to a lounge.
Yes! How dare the middle class infringe upon the rich businessman’s air while he listens in on a MS Teams call and pretends he adds something of value as he sips alcohol.
But seriously, yes, I think also with the internet and blogs such as these, information about so called “travel hacks” is more accessible. That’s in addition to the ever-more lucrative sign up bonuses on the high tier credit cards. I don’t mind busy lounges, still beats the long lines at Wendy’s
My “lounge” is finding an empty gate (plenty of seats) after purchasing something from McDonald’s or Wendy’s. The food is good (others will likely disagree) and I know I’ll have peace and quiet for a while unlike the lounges which are just a zoo now. No thanks.
Wait until the airlines catch on and charge for the privilege of sitting at their empty gate
This isn’t a class struggle. Lounges used to be reserved for travelers in premium cabins and frequent fliers. Now it’s open to anyone with a credit card, no matter how seldom they fly. I think you still see that in, for instance, the United Club at LAX. It’s the credit card and PP lounges that are overcrowded. I would like to see airline-branded lounges retain their original concept of catering to premium/frequent travelers and then let the credit card lounges do as they wish to manage crowds, dole our food, etc.
AA has the Flagship, UA has the Polaris. Others like AF and EK have a higher tier lounge. DL will soon have their Delta One lounges. Also lounges used to suck compared to the near-buffet spread that some of these lounges have now.
The old Northwest lounges had a buffet of sorts with their self serve liquor. The under 30 version of myself loved these more than any food buffet.
The premium self-serve alcohol available in Lufthansa Senator lounges is just about the only enjoyable part left in the experience of travelling with them (I don’t care what people think about their F; in any event it’s only available in a tiny minority of routes). And a huge contrast to the rubbish offered by some of their competitors (e.g. KLM) and even subsidiaries (e.g. SN).
I was a receptionist in a LAX club. No, the lounges were not for people flying in FC. They were self-sustaining separate businesses within the airline. Membership paid for the employees salaries, the food & beverages, and the furnishings.
Interesting — which lounge?
I haven’t seen an airline lounge I’d like to hang out in .. at-least not traveling in the USA but wouldn’t you say it’s the bloggers pedaling credit cards that ruined lounges ?
Does anyone else find it a little rich to read a travel blogger blaming credit card companies for pushing a lounge access product? I’m only here because that’s not the model of this site but if the credit card companies are to blame their minions at Once Credit Card at a Time and TPG deserve an honorable mention shoutout.
Might want to proof read before you hit post buddy.
As you know, the Telegraph is a British paper. The funny thing is that, unlike US airlines sucking up to credit card companies, the main lounge issue in the UK is that airport lounges turn away Priority Pass members in order to ensure that they have space for frequent flyers and business class pax! This is obviously a major bugbear for those who paid 500 quid or whatever for their Amex Platinum card, so they end up writing an article that essentially complains that their lounge experience has been degraded by people just like themselves!
For the record, I have never had to wait in a queue and certainly haven’t been turned away from a UK airport lounge as a Star Alliance Gold or business class passenger (with one odd exception in 2019 flying Iberia Express out of BHX where for a strange reason they only allowed contact lounge access to oneworld frequent flyers and not C class pax)- readers of HfP, Raffles’s blog, are constantly moaning about the same lounges turning their PP/Amex cards away.
Not The Telegraph’s editorial , it’s the opinions of Ott
Obvious conflicting principles from a blogger to state these reasons.
Dumb ass.
Ah, that explains why the article isn’t written from a UK perspective!
What’s the word about a post bemoaning credit card users clogging lounges on a site that pushes credit cards. Chutzpah comes to mind.
Another issue is that people in general are flying more as in real terms it has become cheaper. The WHOLE flying experience when flying domestic, no matter where you are has become very down market.
“Lounges can’t keep up” indicates that they were either oversold (accepted new customers without full payment) or they’re pocketing the cash.
Middle class hunger for the finer things in life is how so many of us can leisure travel in the first place, go to restaurants where someone else cooks and serves us, and buy new clothes instead of mending the old ones. The way the system is supposed to work is just add lounge space. Aren’t there enough bookstores and perfume stores in the airports that can be converted to a better use?
@ The Middle Class and Donald Trump have pretty much ruined most things in America. Thank goodness there are 200 other countries.
Things were objectively better when President Trump was in office and i’m not surprised a bourgeoisie liberal hates the middle-class. You’re probably also one of those people that just loves black people as long as they aren’t in your neighborhood.
And exactly how many years did it take for the middle class to figure out how to get easy lounge access?
Yes, credit cards are causing these headaches. But I don’t think it’s middle class pax who are picking up these high annual fee cards
Contrary to what they’d prefer, it’s not my mission in life to make the rich happy. Only myself and my family. We like lounges and pay for access, just like they do. If that discomforts the rich, that’s just too damn bad.
I think that you will find that the rich tend to prefer private flights rather than slumming it on scheduled flights and spending hours in lounges connecting at LHR, MIA, IST and other unpleasant facilities. This sort of thing is mostly about ‘road warriors ‘ constantly flying on other people’s money and wanting to feel important because of a nominally high salary (never mind the fact that, once you take the tax off and calculate the hourly rate for their stupid amounts of work, commutes, and business travel, they are probably netting the same per hour as someone in a bog standard 35-hour admin job). I think that after the financial crisis, their numbers started to dwindle, and the pandemic consigned many of them to a life on Teams. I think that this is a positive development for everyone involved (including the road warriors themselves), but some people just can’t cope with the change!
I like the suspiciously specific description of the so-called “road warriors.”
There are two sides to every transaction.
During the Great Recession, some put the blame on banks. Yeah, banks issued subprime mortgages to borrowers of–at best–questionable credit worthiness. Yeah, they did it because they could resell those mortgages and take them off their books. So yeah, some blame goes to them. But aren’t those borrowers who took up a loan despite knowing they are a bad credit risk just as much to blame?
So that’s my analogy. Sure, the middle class uses lounges extensively. But airlines sell a ton of products promising a neat lounge experience. They take the money from one-time passes, club memberships, mileage sales to financial institutions issuing co-branded cards, …
Don’t be surprised if B6 opens its own lounge(s) or develops a deep co-brand with existing lounges.
If B6 wants to be the 5th largest airline in the US, lounges are the next logical step considering Euro expansion.
PAX will be looking for somewhere to hang out with 3-5 hour layovers between Euro connections at JFK and BOS.
Criteria: Mint Ticketing, Mosaic Status, or purchase of a membership….keep it simple….not like the mash up at the Widget.
There’s no such thing as a middle class anymore. Theres a class that makes more than they could ever spend, a class that’s spends way above their means on credit cards until they file bankruptcy, and a class that lives in poverty.
Why are you blaming credit cards and not the airlines?
The airlines are the ones who have sole control over the lounges and who gets access.
ANA lounge at Haneda in Nov was very busy but the food and drink were a welcome respite before the 10hr flite to SF. Wealthy (not rich) use smaller faster transport as pointed out in other post and arrive minutes before their flites at a different section of the airport. Blame? It’s on the business, not the customer, get it straight. Waiting lines? Turning away paying customers? Sounds like they’re winning. And you’re the fool if you think otherwise, get it right. Now let’s find that reward chart for next Oct.
Everyone loves to rave about ANA but their lounge at Haneda is horrible. United Polaris lounge is in a completely different league. Did you notice that they are allowing PP in the Haneda lounge also, which makes it even more crowded.
Do tell us about the “mother story” from Denver United lounge. Hope it’s not your mother you are dissing.
Denver is a UA hub with only one open UA lounge. I was there in April 2022. It was a total zoo, poor service people, massively overcrowded. While SFO is a UA hub it has 3 UA lounges to handle the capacity.
BTW business people doing conference calls on their Bluetooth headsets break the tranquility more than anything else.
In the case of the United Club I don’t blame the middle class for ruining the experience. I blame United for hiring Flik as their contractor. Scott, you should fire the VP and their entire staff that’s responsible for this.
The Clubs are filthy, especially at ORD, and the food never changes. It’s meatball subs and the same sandwiches every Freaking day. It’s a running joke amongst us road warriors “ Oh look, it’s meatball subs again…”. The days of variety and quality are gone with Flik. Gone are the days of the Chicago hot dogs, chicken parm and Swedish meatballs.
Oh, and let’s eliminate the day pass holders while we’re cleaning house.
A “middle class guy” lol, who pushes credit cards, defends credit cards! I’m shocked I tell you!
Shocked!
I enjoy the Priority Pass membership that comes with my Venture X but I can see how frustrating it can be for those who pay for a premium cabin ticket and have to stand in line. Perhaps the lounge operators could create different sections within the lounges so that the premium cabin flyers do not have to stand in line while the ones with the credit card perks like myself could battle it out in line, so to speak.
The lounges at the United Club incredibly more crowded than pre-Covid. I am a Gold status elite, and pay the $700 annual fee for United Club privileges. The intent was to be able to work, or grab a quite meal or drink between connections. The credit card mob onslaught has ruined this model. Instead of $700, now for $100 annual free, the credit card types now overrun the United Clubs. Regrettably, the United Clubs have become like the kids uncontrolled circus free buffet breakfast lines at the cheaper hotels.
I don’t like the daily fee entry either. If I wanted a Southwest airlines type experience, I would have flown Southwest. Make the United Club like was for first class business travelers, business travelers, or elite status members willing to pay a hefty annual fee. Maybe accepting the money from the credit mob was a necessary evil during the pandemic. Going forward the credit card companies should do their own thing like American Express Centurion, and United should work on making the United Clubs an elite experience for United flyers.
I don’t know what is worse: family with elementary school children running around the lounge or the business travelers yammering on their Bluetooth headsets .
I’m very certain that untrained children are far more distracting to everyone except other parents with similarly untrained kids
Limousine libs saying the quiet part out loud again.
I dont know about the middle class but I’d argue its families who each bring their 3 or 4 kids into the lounge that is pushing them to the point of overcrowding. I’m actually glad Amex is going to start charging people for each guest and I wonder how other lounges would look if they did the same.
FWIW this is not a first world problem or anything like that. I’m in an airport 3-4 days a week, I want whatever peace and quiet I can find. So thats what I look for in a lounge – sorry/not sorry but I dont want to go into lounges like the Admirals Club in MIA and see that they have a KIDS ZONE in there.
The author of the original article’s premise doesn’t make any sense. Credit Cards have long offered lounge access. I think I first got the MileagePlus Club card in 2011. It offered “RCC” access, as well as access to all *A business lounges. Day passes have always been available in the USA; this isn’t new. Furthermore, the offerings now are far better than they were 15 years ago when you didn’t even yet draught beer for free.
Lounges are crowded, no doubt about that, but there’s no single solution. I think people are nostalgic for something that never existed.
It’s not just lounges, it’s air travel in general, period. I don’t care how much you make or if you got your seat with miles or as a gift from the ticketing agent. Would it kill you to bathe and wear deodorant, or go the entire flight without putting your smelly feet or dirty shoes up against the wall? Back in the 70s/80s, people actually dressed up for their flight: collared shirt at a minimum. I’ve recently sat in first class next to teenagers with BO, workers straight off a construction project in tank tops, grown adults completely drunk … it’s a s$&@-show.
I feel the lounge problem is greedy airlines and their alliance agreements. After all the credit cards don’t own the airline lounges, they pay a small amount to the airline who then inconveniences their direct customers who paid them for a supposedly stress free and luxurious journey