News: British Airways closes Houston lounge, Virgin returns to Havana, Courtyard Exeter opens

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• Dominic Barrington says:

  27 Apr27 April 04:47

  It had to have been one of the worst BA lounges in North America, so this is not much of a loss. What is a bigger concern are the lounges which were good but are now being terribly run down – very notably in my home city of Chicago.

  • ChrisC says:

    27 Apr27 April 16:19

    Aren’t BA departures due to be moving to T3 so then pax will have access to the AC or (if eligible) the Flagship Lounge?

• Tom says:

  27 Apr27 April 05:09

  The problem is that the HAS lounge in Houston is not great. The old BA lounge in Houston, while not fantastic, was arguably better. Definitely use the Amex Centurion lounge in Terminal D if you have access there or consider taking the train to the AA Lounge in Terminal A. If you have Priority Pass, use the KLM lounge in D.

• Gibbsy says:

  27 Apr27 April 06:56

  I once saw the late great Albert Roux in the first class area of the Houston lounge.

  Personally – a further data point highlighting why I’m done and dusted with BA.

  • Rich says:

    27 Apr27 April 08:40

    Is the term ‘data point’ just another way of saying fact, decision or reason?

    • ianM says:

      27 Apr27 April 09:12

      I hate that term

• Stuart says:

  27 Apr27 April 07:10

  The BA lounge in Houston was awful, there’s a very good Amex lounge in the same terminal.

• ChrisC says:

  27 Apr27 April 07:31

  So QR did a deal with AF-KL then good for all three. Their current departure times (see below) are spread out so they won’t end up with over flowing lounges and the resulting complaints. Assuming no other usage of the AF- KL lounge it basically becomes a QR dedicated space once the AF flight has departed.

  There is a schedule clash between BA and AF-KL departures so it makes sense for BA to have looked at another lounge offering.

  Looking at today those 4 airlines they have departures as follows

  15.00 KL AMS
  15.45 AF CDG
  16.00 BA LHR
  18.10 QR DOH

• yorkieflyer says:

  27 Apr27 April 08:53

  Havana not a destination yet on the VS app

• Santosh says:

  27 Apr27 April 08:58

  Havana can be booked only through virgin holiday and not as flight only on app/website. It is due to long standing sanctions.

  • ohanssen says:

    27 Apr27 April 10:16

    Is the UK subject to particularly different sanction rules vs the rest of Europe? KLM, Air France, and others fly to Cuba without any issue, so is this just something done unofficially? I was actually happy I had found a destination on the Virgin network I actually want to go to.

    • ChrisC says:

      27 Apr27 April 15:54

      These would be the US sanctions on Cuba and not sanctions applied by Cuba.

      VS uses the DL booking engine and since there are restrictions on direct US – Cuba flights these get applied to VS flights as wel – or did in the past.

  • ADS says:

    27 Apr27 April 11:59

    I just did a dummy flight only booking and it prices up fine

    Sunday 6th November to Sunday 13th November would cost you £560 plus baggage fees

  • Karl says:

    27 Apr27 April 12:56

    I flew flight only to Havana with Virgin in 2019 if that is classed as long-standing?

    • ChrisA says:

      27 Apr27 April 16:01

      Yes I did a couple of normal flight-only redemptions in 2018.

      • AndyGWP says:

        28 Apr28 April 08:41

        I guess it depends when Virgin started using the DL booking engine 🙂

• yorkieflyer says:

  27 Apr27 April 09:01

  No rewards flights bookable to HAV too, I think this applied previously and was something to do with US sanctions

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