The new ‘Escape’ lounge at Stansted Airport opened on Monday. ‘Escape’ is the in-house brand operated by Manchester Airports Group, who own Stansted.
(This is part of our series of reviews of airport lounges across the UK. You see all of the reviews here.)
You can book your entry in advance via the Lounge Pass website here.
‘Escape’ is the first airport lounge to be located in the main departure area at Stansted, on the mezzanine floor. This means that EVERY passenger can use it, whichever pier they are flying from, although children under 6 are not allowed in.
The lounge takes part in Priority Pass. It is also part of Lounge Club so it is a good place to use the two free Lounge Club passes that come with the – free for the first year – American Express Gold card (review). Alternatively, you can buy entrance in advance to guarantee a spot.
Thank you to Mark for these first pictures of the new Escape lounge at Stansted.
About Head for Points
Thanks to this article I was able to enjoy this lounge on a trip out to Valencia last weekend. Here’s what I did:
I showed the Lounge Club card (it came with my Amex Gold card) to the guy on Fast Track security, he let my wife and I in (we only have one card between us) thus skipping the 150-person-long queue, and breezed through security in about 5 minutes.
You then have to go with all the other passengers through all the shops until you reach the main departure lounge. At the time we arrived (about 5.30am) there was standing room only, the place was packed! (possibly to do with the building work currently going on there). After a bit of shuffling around, we saw a sign to the lounge right by the toilets (not the most illustrious of entrances). The lounge itself had coffee machine, pastries, cookies, cereal etc, similar to a Premier Inn breakfast. The sausage in a bap was quite tasty too.
Apart from the fact that it was relatively calm, lots of seating, and good selection of food, one of the other great advantages is having its own toilets inside compared to the state of the main departure ones. I will be hanging on to my lounge card once I cancel the Amex gold, free fast track for the next 2 years sounds good to me!
I believe its £25 now. I am on the lounge via PP card. I thought the signage to direct me here was terrible. Although the last time I visited Stansted was 14 years ago so I cant recall if its better or worse. Sadly I forgot to ask about using PPcard for fast track. They’ve got pasta, houmous, sausage rolls, croissants, pies, pasties, sandwiches, cheese & crackers, fruit, cookies and soup. Not too bad. Very little natural light.