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British Airways adds lounges access at eight European airports

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British Airways has added lounge access at eight more European airports.

Over the last year British Airways has been working hard to add lounge access for eligible customers at European airports where it has no lounge of its own.

There will never be 100% coverage because a few small airports, mainly at holiday destinations, do not have a lounge.  There are other airports, however, where British Airways had previously refused to do a deal with an existing third party lounge.

BA passengers at the following airports will gain lounge access ‘during’ Summer 2019:

  • Thessaloniki
  • Paphos
  • Heraklion
  • Dalaman
  • Olbia
  • Palermo
  • Rhodes
  • Split

The airports below gained lounge access during 2018:

  • Innsbruck
  • Bordeaux
  • Ibiza
  • Krakow
  • Seville
  • Porto
  • Reykjavik

Airports WITHOUT lounge access for BA passengers, but where a lounge does exist, include (and this list may not be 100% accurate, please correct me in the comments):

  • Lanzarote
  • Cagliari
  • Catania
  • Madeira
  • Mykonos
  • Montpelier
  • Brindisi
  • Bari
  • Cologne

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Comments (78)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • David says:

    The problem with JMK (Mykonos) is that the lounge is TINY. Probably capacity for a dozen max, assuming they are not all one group so spread around. One BA City flight full of Club and status passengers would overwhelm it.

    • Gin and Tonic Please says:

      Completely agree. That said, the airport is going through a major refurb over the next 12 (possibly 24) months, so fingers crossed they put in a proper lounge facility. I’m guessing BA are waiting to see what happens with that before doing anything.

      • Julian says:

        But its a sunny beautiful island so why would you want to spend an extra hour in the airport lounge rather than at the beach?

  • Alex Marunchak says:

    re BA club lounges. It’s all very well for the company to trumpet the opening of lounges abroad but what a pity they have yet to open a club class lounge for passengers at London City Airport. Absolutely scandalous that one does not exist.

    • Genghis says:

      The whole point of London City was to rock up and head straight to the gate. It’s getting a bit too big for that purpose now, however

      • Rob says:

        And there are two lounges at City if you don’t mind walking over the the Private Jet Centre and paying – but you will get driven to your aircraft.

      • Rob says:

        Problem with City, as you see from the priority boarding line, is that the majority of passengers on the business routes have status. Let’s make up some numbers and say that BA is 50% of City’s capacity and that 33% of BA passengers from City are Silver or Gold. This means that 1 in 6 of all passengers would qualify for the BA lounge, and assuming that your lounge needs to be more spacious than the concourse then it would need about 30% of the entire terminal floor space!

        • Charlieface says:

          DXB is very clever in this respect as the lounge pretty much doubles up as another whole terminal

  • Adam says:

    Stavanger was sadly pulled from the BA network last year (I think!) – personally sad to see it go as was a convenient connection for visiting family. The lounge there was really nice, but only seemed to be KLM allowing passengers to use it.

  • Gin and Tonic Please says:

    We went to the lounge at Catania last year on PP. Wow, honestly the smallest and worst one I’ve been in. Capacity for max 25 (very friendly) people and absolute minimum refreshments. Not surprised BA haven’t signed up to using it.

  • YouthfulGCH! says:

    It would seem that Gran Canaria is without a lounge too. Only showing on the oneworld website as available to Iberia customers. Happy to be corrected though, especially with a BA flight from there planned for June!

    • Julian says:

      Surely BA must be able to secure access rights there as if one is flying from any other Spanish airport on a BA flight with an Iberia lounge when travelling in BA Club one can always access the Iberia lounge at that airport. Have done just that at Son San Juan airport (also sometimes called Mallorca Airport more than once.

  • Michael C says:

    OT Cathay avios availability: looking for a quick HKG-BKK in late July, but nothing in any class on any day. Is it possible they’ll be released nearer the time?

  • Julian says:

    No lounge at Santorini according to http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19761462-post16.html but that also contradicts what Rob has told us about Mykonos now having a lounge but one that is still not available to BA customers.

    Its 15 years since my tour of nearly all the Cyclades islands but when I was there Mykonos already had a fairly impressive terminal and runway (I merely drove there on my quad bike but didn’t fly in to it) for a small Greek island but everything of consequence on Santorini seemed to come and go by boat (the dangerous donkey ride up and down the winding track on the cliff to the boat landing stage seemingly being one of the main tourist attractions on the island).

    Greek island airports are in general absurdly small (or at least were) in relation to the passenger numbers they handle in the summer season and the numerous islands do not lend themselves as readily to flashy and sophisticated airports at all of them.

    • Gin and Tonic Please says:

      That FT page is out of date. (I’ve sent feedback before but can’t edit it myself as I haven’t written enough comments to qualify.) Mykonos opened a lounger 2 years ago, and I’ve been 3 times on PP. It’s very nicely done, but tiny. It’s also airside in the ‘domestic terminal’, though that only means it’s in the left hand side of the building, about 5 min walk from security for international flights.

      • Leo says:

        Honestly can’t be bothered with the lounge in JMK. After you’ve slung your case through the xray yourself there’s not a lot of point- the cafe airside is no real step down from the lounge! It’s a lot better than the old airport though – but now I’m really going back…

  • Aaron says:

    Flew from Norwich back in November enroute to the US. I saw the lounge – you can fairly easily peer into it. It looks pretty rubbish and small – but more importantly I’m not sure why anyone would need to use it!! The terminal itself is very spacious and has loads of seating and you generally only ever have max 2 flights departing at any one time so you’d be more comfortable just grabbing a seat in the cafe or something. Unless of course you’re just after a bunch of free booze! But by no means should anyone actually pay their own money to get in.

    • Paul Hudspith says:

      Now that Loganair are moving in to compete with Eastern on the critical and high traffic Newcastle-Norwich route maybe fares will get so competitive I can head down and check it out 🙂

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