Unlock Editor’s Digest Lock for Free
FT editor Roula Khalaf will select your favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
For regular commuters, the lounge must be like a club. We look forward to your favourite armchairs and dishes that are encouraging and welcome, perhaps looking forward to. (Through many years of toning and Frewing between London and Johannesburg, I became obsessed with the Shower Dinner Smaltok ritual. The best lounges accept both congregations, work and life, balanced on boarding cards.
After experiencing hundreds of lounge highs and lows in around 75 countries, I developed almost philosophical ideas about what I like and dislike in the lounge.
A good lounge should be practical and privileged. Lufthansa First Cluster Terminal at Frankfurt Airport and the etheric private terminal at Manchester will achieve this perfectly. It is a small standalone building that allows you to lounge in minutes and minutes from the car without having to step in the rest of the airport. Virgin Upper Class Wing (Heathrow Terminal 3) takes you from your own private driveway to the private check-in area and lounge on the first floor of the terminal. At Ether Private Terminal, backend security allows you to stay with guests who don’t travel until they board.
It’s easy to fly from the lounge. A typical 15-minute heathlow walk is good for step counting, but it means it tends to arrive at the gate or a little too late. Ether Lounges, and – for their top passengers, lounges in Air France (Paris), Lufthansa (Frankfurt), Switzerland (Zurich) spirit customers at the right moment just for BMW, Mercedes, or Porsche planes. The BA lounge in Boston, Emirates in Dubai and Etihad in Abu Dhabi have direct access to the gate below.
After a long day trip or before a night flight, sparkles, squirts and plenty of showers are essential. Zurich’s first Swiss shower cabin radiates Switzerland: Brilliant White, named after the Swiss watering hole (Ascona, Grindelwald), and comes with alpine herb-scented Rausch products. Cathay (Wing, Hong Kong) and Lufthansa (First Class, Frankfurt) offer generous bathtubs. The Carrara marble shower room in Qantas’s first lounge in Singapore will cheer you up for the next leg of your transcontinental flight. The refined shoes have also encouraged me, so I always look forward to Jal’s perfect John Rob Brand shoe shine service in the “library” of my first class lounge in Haneda, Tokyo. I miss the day when I can get a haircut at the Virgin Clubhouse in Heathrow.
The bedroom is perfect for connections. Etihad’s “relaxation room” in a business-class lounge in Abu Dhabi offers darkness and quietness. Etihad complements U.S. immigrant pre-clearance facilities with lounges where passengers can retire after they are processed. At Ether Private Terminal, backend security allows you to stay with guests who don’t travel until they board.
A good lounge should give you a strong sense of place. From the Kaitas Lounge to the Sydney Skyline, it starts with spectacular views, from the Marco Polo Lounge (Venice) to the campanile of Torcello, to the contours of the peak district of the Ether Private Terminal (Manchester) or the Swiss Alps (Swiss Lounge, Turrich Terminal E). The best lounges have outdoor spaces. Lufthansa First (Munich) boasts a panoramic rooftop, while Switzerland First (Zurich Terminal E) has its own generous terrace. (The Mataburi airport on Easter Island and the outer Hebrides roses each provide passengers and make up for the lack of lounges by offering gardens decorated with Moai statues and sandy beaches.
Design and architecture define location and a sense of national identity (which is important for flag carriers). Qantas and Cathay Pacific led the way in the late 1990s and early 2000s by designing the lounges of Australian industrial designers Mark Newsson and Cathay Pacific in the case of John Pawson. Newson’s futuristic schemes can still be enjoyed in the first class lounges of Qantas in Los Angeles and Sydney, but the new lounges of Qantas in Perth and Singapore are beautifully created by Australian designer David Kaon using a sleek fixture from Studio Henry Wilson. Cathay uses Ilse Crawford to redesign Hong Kong lounges with soft Asian idioms. The rustic decorations of the Swiss Alpine Lounge (Zurich) evoke the mountain hat, a contemporary take on Jet Set Gem Trichate from GSTAAD’s Eagle Scrub.
The lounge walls can tell you a lot about the country you are in and the airline you are flying to. From portraits of various dictatorial rulers (worldwide), to statues of Nefertiti at the VIP terminal in Cairo and photographs of Fidel Castro at the old CIP lounge in Caput. BA sold many of the UK’s outstanding art collections during the pandemic, but some good pieces remain, including the beautiful Susan Derges photo shoot in the Concorde Room at Heathrow T5. I have always enjoyed John Virtue’s paintings in the old BMI lounge at Heathrow T1. If only the airlines and museums were to work together to change the exhibition of works from museum collections, make the most of these ultra-safe environments and follow the lead of Rijksmuseum’s Schiphol Airport Gallery to showcase amazing art in more lounges.
The lounge should give you a sense of a journey waiting for you. At Concorde Lounges at Old Air France, Concorde pilots discussed flights with passengers before boarding the rocket outside, similar to how French top chefs walk through Salle to greet diners. The captain of commerce at the captain’s table.
Food in the lounge contributes to the feeling of travel, and (particularly during transportation) the excitement of traveling around the world. When I was in Lisbon, when I was in Lisbon, when I was in Lisbon, when I was in Hong Kong, when I was offering the most delicate dim sum (Cathay lounge), when I was offering the most delicate dim sum (Cathay lounge), when I consumed kn Odell’s dumplings and veltliner (between kn Odell’s dumplings and veltliner (between kn Odell’s dumplings and veltliner) when my peanut butter was mixed with bilton (at the Songoro Lounge in Johannesburg) in South Africa.
People, among other things, make lounges. Staff need to make them feel important and welcomed, rather than being eligible for entrance exams. Other travelers are very important. Shave embarrassment on Addis and Asian delegations in Doha lounges, miners on both ends of the Wallaby route, or miners from London to Santiago, and Robsbis from Basel to Beijing, Mysing and Delta. . . The lounge describes commerce, trade flows and local society.
What makes a bad lounge
The description of what makes a good lounge is not complete without mentioning some of the things that make a bad lounge. Lounges are often overcrowded. This is because seating is often not considered (two or four tables at business airports that serve a single traveler). The chairs are too low and soft, and not to mention the food – the tables are either lacking or insufficient. Often there is no sunlight or proper reading light either. A windowless lounge is as numb and joyless as the inside of a casino. Noisy sports are broadcast on a large screen without quiet areas (specific issues in Latin America). Very, there are lounges that ask you to leave when the plane is late (as I recently experienced with Austrians in Vienna); In many tropical lounges, if the air conditioner rattle is working. If you are told that there are malaria mosquitoes in the lounge (as I used to be in Liberia), your calm sensation may also be rattling.
What do you like in the airport lounge? Please let me know in the comments below. Follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram to find out about your first latest story
