Review: the British Airways Terraces Lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport

This is my review of the British Airways Terraces lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport.

After having spent two weeks in Germany it was time for me to fly back from Berlin to London. It was my first ever flight out of Tegel having only arrived there before on my airberlin flight from New York last summer.

What I can say is:  Tegel isn’t fun and it is rather confusing.

It took us (my flatmate came to Berlin for New Years Eve) approximately 30 minutes to figure out where to find the BA check in desk and bag drop – with very little help from the airport staff – just to find that out that it wasn’t yet open.

Once the bag drop opened we found a very inefficient process of checking people in and sending bags off.  My Silver card didn’t help as the ‘Priority’ Lane was even slower.  Once we finally got our bags dropped off it took us another 15 minutes to find the BA Terraces lounge – it is landside, back by the main entrance and upstairs next to Starbucks.

We got there in the end though:

What is inside the British Airways lounge at Berlin Tegel?

With Brandenburg Airport meant to have been open years ago, airlines have been unwilling to invest in Tegel and it shows here.  The British Airways Terraces lounge is nothing exciting, although it certainly isn’t the worst BA outstation lounge.  It’s basically one big room with different sitting areas separated by shelves.

There was a bar in the middle of the room with a selection of four different red wines, two white wines and Rotkaeppchen Sekt. There was also a decent range of gin, rum, vodka etc.

In one corner of the lounge was a small separate quiet room with view over the main entrance hall of Tegel airport.

The coffee machine with biscuits and a wardrobe for coats was at the other end of the lounge.

The centrepiece of the British Airways Terraces lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport is this stone bench with flower pot.  Looking at the comments to my Instagram photo, the flowers are a recent addition.

The lounge also had a work area with desk, lamps and plugs.

This was the magazine selection with English and German titles.

There were English and German newspapers:

The lounge doesn’t have its own bathrooms and you have to use the ones next to the Starbucks.  These are opposite the lounge but about a two and a half minute walk away (half a flight of stairs down, half a flight up, to the right, along the corridor, through the door and to the left!).

To give you a better impression, here is a short YouTube video of the British Airways Terraces Lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport (you can subscribe to our YouTube channel via this page – this is the same link to visit if the video does not appear below).

Conclusion

The British Airways Terraces lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport is not overwhelming and I don’t recommend getting to the airport too early if you can avoid it.

One thing that is especially annoying is the distance you have to walk from the main hall to the bag drop and then back to the lounge – just to retrace your route when it’s time for boarding. The fact that the toilets are outside the lounge is also slightly frustrating and time consuming.

The food selection in the evening was a bit underwhelming with a couple of sandwiches, fruits and bags of crisps.  The wine was very good and the wifi connection was decent.  All in all I found the lounge perfectly OK for a snack and a drink but a bit too depressing to want to spend more than half an hour there.

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