British Airways changes access rules for the Dubai airport lounge

I was in the British Airways Dubai lounge on Saturday – an updated review is on the way.

The bottom line is that, whilst a virtually brand new space, it is far too small, especially when an A380 is running.

BA has now made some drastic changes to offset this. The new policy is confirmed on the oneworld alliance lounge website here.

Going forward, the British Airways lounge is only accessible to:

• First Class passengers
• British Airways Gold and oneworld Emerald members

Club World customers, BA Executive Club Silver and oneworld Sapphire card holders are now meant to use the (not great) Marhaba Lounge opposite.

However, I’m not entirely sure that this is being followed in practice.

When I arrived with my children, I was given a pass for ‘The Bar’ (the renamed ‘Concorde Bar’ – the ‘Concorde’ branding is going at JFK too) which is a private room at the far side of the lounge. This is now the only place with self pour alcohol.

I was travelling Club World and am Gold, not Gold Guest List. My daughter is Silver, my son in Blue.

If I was sent to ‘The Bar’, who was using the rest of the lounge? And why was only one other group in ‘The Bar’? It seems odd that there would only be two Gold card holders on a 100% full Boeing 777 service.

Whatever the answer, you should assume that – unless you are Gold or flying in First Class – you won’t be using the British Airways lounge.

We’re nominated for a Business Travel Journalism Award

I’m pleased to say that we’ve been nominated for ‘Editorial Team of the Year’ at the 2022 Business Travel Journalism Awards.

Whilst we have won a few of these awards in the past (ahem), it is always difficult to compete with the print titles because we don’t do long-form writing.

It’s far easier for the judges to appreciate a 5,000 word deep dive into a topic than consider the effort and skill required to write 10 x 500 word ‘sharp, relevant and to the point’ summaries on 10 different topics.

October 2022 was a record month for us with 2.47 million page views, putting us comfortably on target for 25 million for the year – a good way to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

PS. Talking of 500 word articles, I contributed a piece on predicting the future of travel to Malcolm Ginsberg’s new ‘Travel News Update’ monthly newsletter this week, which you can find here. ‘Travel News Update’ is designed to be a free round-up of forthcoming events, openings and developments in the industry.

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