I have been impressed by the ‘Escape’ lounge at Manchester Airport’s Terminal 3 on the two occasions that I have used it. I was pleased to hear that a new ‘Escape’ lounge has opened at East Midlands Airport, which is also owned by Manchester Airports Group.
You can book your entry in advance, to guarantee admission, on the airport website here.
The new East Midlands facility is four times the size of the existing lounge. Here are a few pictures provided by their press office:
You can pay for access to the lounge at £22.50 per person (£3.50 discount for online booking, discounts for children under 12). This is a pretty chunky fee, especially as most passengers will be flying budget airlines on cheap tickets to Europe, so I would expect a decent amount of food and drink for the money.
The good news is that you can access the lounge for free. It is part of Lounge Club so you will receive two free passes if you apply for an American Express Preferred Rewards Gold card (full review here). It is also part of Priority Pass. You receive two free Priority Pass cards – each admitting two people, so four people are covered – with the American Express Platinum card. My full review of that card is here.
(You also receive 20,000 Avios with Amex Gold and 30,000 Avios with Amex Platinum as a sign-up bonus if you convert the Membership Rewards points!)
For a one-off visit, you can pay for admission via the airport website here. This guarantees that you won’t be refused admission due to overcrowding.
Next week I will take a comprehensive look at the UK lounge coverage offered by Lounge Club and Priority Pass.
About Head for Points
Looks ok but nothing special. I’m never a fan of garish colours – makes it look more like a hostel rather than a lounge, a bit like the Cézanne lounge at Marseille. Mind you, ‘escape’ is a good name given it’s in East Midlands airport 😉
Do the priority passes, you receive with platinum Amex, still work if you have cancelled the Amex card?
No, the free entry part is cancelled by amex once you cancel your card. But they can be slow to cancel it, so you could still try your luck, and risk being charged at a later date. But, later on you can still enter and pay. It reduces down to the basic entry pay per visit card, I think , correct me if I am wrong, Rob.
Not sure Polly, to be honest.
No, when Amex Platinum is cancelled, Priority Pass goes away fully.(no paid access, or at least I wasn’t offered that when I tried to use it).
And I may be wrong, but before I cancelled my Amex Platinum I thought the Priority Pass entry had gone down to 1 person per card, but I can’t be sure now.
I was in there at EMA recently. Good standard for a non-airline lounge. Plenty of seats and there are some free hot snacks to order. However I don’t like the huge two-way window along one side into the crowded terminal. Feels a bit odd reclining in an empty lounge with dozens of people standing looking straight at you.
Tod… that reminds me of the lounge in Phuket… I was getting my free massage and all the arriving passengers on the Air Berlin flight that i was about to take were just walking past watching me..
East Midlands shed is one of the few things that can make me choose to fly from Birmingham.
Ahead of your guide next week, I visited no1 Gatwick North earlier this week and was very impressed. Not up to the same level as Galleries, but definitely close enough to mean that lounge isn’t a differentiator when picking BA CE vs ET or EZY.
I’m about to fly WIC-EDI-MAN and I was looking forward to trying out the No. 1 lounge. However I have forgotten my PP card! Nooooooooo! 🙂
Any chance you could include Airport Angel lounges in your round up next week Raffles please? 😉
I haven’t (it is already written) but I will look at the lists and may add a paragraph in. Technically on holiday now though! (typing this in Heathrow).
Don’t go out of your way – holidays are for relaxing 😉
Do they still charge cars a couple of quid to drop off passengers at the terminal?
As someone whose family is from Notts/Leics/Derby, I used to think kindly of EMA, wondering what it would be like if it ever developed. Our school “aviation society” get trips around British Midland maintenance courtesy of Captain Griffiths, but it was still a quiet backwater with the occasional charter flight.
Then 4 years ago I flew on bmi baby to Malta….the first time out of donny for 20 years…..boy had it changed. The Ryanairisation of every service at the airport was shocking. I guess they need the cash to pay for their enormous control tower.