Review: the new British Airways Galleries First lounge in Houston

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• Frankie says:

  11 Dec11 December 07:25

  The (rather poor) BA lounge in Phoenix has also recently started being a Priority Pass Lounge up until about 3pm daily. The sole daily BA flight leaves about 7pm.

  • Rob says:

    11 Dec11 December 09:04

    This does explain something. A while back, BA was advertising a job which was basically ‘someone to make more money from, and cut costs associated with, our lounges’. This cosying up to Priority Pass is clearly part of this.

• Paul says:

  11 Dec11 December 07:45

  It is necessary to manage your own expectations when you fly BA.
  First is not a true First product, not when measured against Any of the world leaders, at best it is a J+ product and the lounges mirror this.
  Club is a flat bed and nothing more. It’s fine but if you want proper business class then you need to look to The cirrus seats or other carriers of the likes of SQ EK EY etc.
  If you do this you will not be disappointed but if you expect luxury fine dining a sleek service you will be very disappointed.

  • Waribai says:

    11 Dec11 December 08:53

    Couldn’t have put it better!

    “to be honest, I did expect a little more from BA for a First Class lounge.”

    Why? It seems to conform to their standard offering!

  • Andy says:

    11 Dec11 December 09:29

    Have to agree. BA CW is just economy with a lie-flat seat and no isle access. Non-airline specific lounges are generally better than BA biz lounges. At Gatwick, the laughably crap Galleries lounge is worse than the No.1 Lounge. BA first is nice, but no better than biz on any decent airline. If it was not for redemptions, I wonder if anybody would fly BA first at all.

    I would say that BA needs to up its game, but the truth is, it doesn’t. It’s got a stranglehold on Heathrow, which means it can get away with a sub-standard service. It doesn’t have to compete with proper airlines – if it did, it would get slaughtered.

• asjg says:

  11 Dec11 December 09:02

  Um, this looks no different from when I was in that same lounge over a year ago!

  • IMH says:

    11 Dec11 December 17:28

    Someone’s fed Raffles a report that’s a little past its sell-by date. The lounges were refreshed a few years ago (2011, I’d guess, 2012 at the latest) and they’re located near a bridge to the E gates, not the C gates.

    Both of the BA lounges at IAH are fine if demand is low, but that isn’t usually the case. There aren’t enough toilets. Having good local beer (Amber and Elissa IPA, both from Saint Arnold) is a plus.

• danksy says:

  11 Dec11 December 09:10

  I was thoroughly underwhelmed when I visited. The lounge was so busy at one stage there was no place to sit for people. Luckily we arrived early, but note that since BA doesn’t have many flights from IAH the checki-n generally doesn’t open until 2.5 hours before the flight!

• Freebies says:

  12 Dec12 December 21:32

  Well, it looks better than the UA lounge! That lounge was a dump and didn’t even have any food!

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