Heathrow lounge news: Air France KLM in T4, inside the American Airlines First lounge in T3

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• Jens Fallesen says:

  24 Mar24 March 06:24

  Rather strangely, there was no access to any of the AA lounges at around 5pm yesterday. Sliding doors shut and nobody visible though the gap. No signage to say why.

  Guess I’ll have to come back for a look and some Lindor next time I’m in T3. 😉

• masaccio says:

  24 Mar24 March 06:25

  The Cathay First lounge was rammed the other morning — it was impossible to get breakfast so this would have been a good choice I reckon.

  • Andrew says:

    24 Mar24 March 07:10

    Same earlier in the month between 8-10. Not a comfortable experience.

    Ended up moving to the Qantas lounge.

• Paul says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:24

  I think Cathay make more money out of their T3 lounge than any other airline anywhere! It is however often very busy and I can’t say that I found the service to be particularly good. It was slow and hesitant but the food was outstanding

  • sayling says:

    24 Mar24 March 08:35

    How do they make money?

    • Andrew J says:

      24 Mar24 March 08:37

      By charging other One World airlines every time they accept a passenger from them.

• Jan M says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:36

  Well, the lounge they had been using in T3 (Aspire?) was absolutely dire.

• Andrew J says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:40

  The AA lounge was good for to-go items like sweets and bottles of water (Cathay’s water is in glass bottles which isn’t very practical to go, and Qantas and BA serve tap water).

• Tony says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:41

  There is a very good reason to use the American lounge….the help yourself enormous jar of jelly beans!! Paper bags supplied….

• Dev says:

  24 Mar24 March 07:49

  Why don’t Virgin and Delta move to T4. Tbf, after flying through there on Qatar numerous times pre-covid, it’s a good terminal.

  Yes, Virgin will probably need to invest in a new Clubhouse but it’s probably time they thought about the long term at Heathrow with their partners.

  They can even do a Qatar, and stick their Frequent Flyers into the SkyTeam Lounge.

  • Andrew J says:

    24 Mar24 March 07:55

    Virgin would also lose the infamous drive-thru checkin if they left T3.

    • Rob says:

      24 Mar24 March 08:04

      Virgin hate T3 and Shai Weiss has said that he won’t support the 3rd runway unless T3 is entirely rebuilt.

      The cost of moving into T4 with a full Clubhouse would be huge though, and would literally take 5 years. This is not a No1 Lounge, it’s an all singing all dancing entertainment venue. Adding drive thru check-in could take even longer.

      • Andrew J says:

        24 Mar24 March 08:20

        I must be missing the entertainment venue aspects of the Clubhouse, just seems like a lounge to me (with some exercise bikes in the corner) – the spa and hair salon are long gone.

      • JDB says:

        24 Mar24 March 08:38

        Mr Weiss appears to have achieved the impossible, annoying the regulator, HAL and even other airlines with his unproductive and hypocritical comments. Unfortunately it’s people like him who stop Heathrow doing obvious things to improve. He may not like T3 and who does, but for instance if airlines had not tried to press the regulator not eg to build the new baggage system in T2 at the outset. That would have freed up T1 to be knocked down and rebuilt as a standalone terminal or extended T2 followed by a new T3. They kiboshed all that so now Shai can moan some more and everyone pays extra cash for retrofitting the baggage system and older facilities than planned! All to save the pax maybe £3 vs airline surcharges and APD…

        • Rhys says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:07

          Not really. Shai has only withdrawn unconditional support for a third runway recently, as Heathrow was claiming it had to charge ludicrous passenger service charges.

          Not sure Shai can be blamed for Heathrow’s lack of investment across the board, including in new baggage scanners etc!

        • JDB says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:50

          @Rhys you wrote the article only a couple of weeks ago re the H7 settlement which was needed to confirm the capex for the new baggage scanners! It’s all planned and equipment ordered etc. – delay is regulator, not HAL. They have been trialling a number of machines to replace over 100 around the airport with a fair bit of building work required so it isn’t quite as easy as LCY or MMA who have a handful. As reported here, the machines aren’t yet going to help much. They are actually from reports at other airports slowing down progress (average time through security) as they give higher false positives and the machines have a higher failure rate.

          I think you may have misunderstood the regulatory model – it massively suits HAL to make investment as they get a good return on that but the regulator limits the amount they are allowed to invest partly under pressure from airlines – Rob will confirm that to you as he has written about it in the past. The purpose of limiting capex is to stop HAL gold plating things for no reason or benefit to users and getting a return on that. The side effect though is that many investments are not made and things have been built, as ordained by the CAA, on the cheap so they need more maintenance and earlier replacement (see T5). It is patently absurd to have all that T1 space being used by baggage when it could be for passengers; thank you CAA/airlines. The dead hand of the regulator also makes everything take so much longer – H7 was so late, the next regulatory settlement is already being discussed! If H7 is appealed by either side, everything will be mired for years.

          I think that part of Shai’s moaning is that he perceives BA gets favourable treatment. If he engaged a bit more constructively it would ultimately be better for his passengers and the airport.

        • Rhys says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:58

          Heathrow will be required to get the new scanners regardless of the settlement, since all UK airports will legally have to have them by 2025!

          Shai was engaging constructively, until he saw that Heathrow was taking the piss! As I said before, he only withdraw unconditional support for a third runway last year.

        • JDB says:

          24 Mar24 March 10:37

          @Rhys you have clearly been drinking Mr Weiss’ Kool-Aid but his views aren’t widely shared even amongst other airlines. Inter alia, as he has the best facilities at T3 it suits him to make sure nothing is done to improve facilities for others much though he may protest about T3 in general. One of his issues is that LHR long haul charges subsidise short haul ones, something decided between all the parties that doesn’t suit him.

          I’m afraid I struggle to see how you support (by repeating) his trope that LHR is taking the p with a single figure £ difference in charges while he charges £750+ surcharges per person! I don’t know if he rails so much about say JFK charges which, when you add them all up amount to more than LHR ones.

        • Rhys says:

          24 Mar24 March 11:32

          I don’t think he does have the best facilities at T3. T3 is not a great terminal – virtually all gates a long walk, security has been significantly worse than at other terminals, etc.

          From their press release:

          “Jacobs Review of Airport Charges 2022, the authoritative source, confirms Heathrow Airport as the #1 most expensive airport in the world by a significant margin, 24pts above Newark (2nd). Heathrow’s 2022 charges +56% higher vs 2021.”

      • Panda Mick says:

        24 Mar24 March 09:11

        I’ve just had a look on Apple Maps, and T2 takes up only a 1/3rd of the space it could. T1 is the reason for that. It takes up a tonne of space. I see lots of plans that show T2 expanding, but they’d need another remote pier (which may encroach into some of the engineering space east of the airport). Is there any immediate plans for when T1 is demolished?

        • Rhys says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:13

          No. It requires them to install a new baggage system in the massive hole they’ve just dug between T2A and T2B, so I doubt it will happen before 2025.

        • JDB says:

          24 Mar24 March 09:57

          The money (c. £700m) for moving the baggage system out of T1 was approved earlier this month but as Rhys says it will take a good while. Once the system is installed where it should have been, they can start to clear T1 which I understand is a very complex task in itself partly because of the site constraints and, as you would expect from a building of T1’s age, a big asbestos issue. This should all have started ten years ago before the regulator decided on the brilliant idea / false economy of conveying all the T2 luggage to T1 and back. It’s been fortunate that there haven’t been more breakdowns of the ancient T1 luggage system, but ensuring that is very costly.

      • Phillip says:

        24 Mar24 March 10:54

        Demolishing T3 was part of the last expansion plans that were paused during Covid, as well as improved road access to T4 from the south. It will be interesting to see what the next iteration looks like.

• Stuart says:

  24 Mar24 March 08:21

  With the closure of the T4 SkyTeam lounge a few years ago, now wouldn’t all the other SkyTeam airlines in T4 (KE, MU, KQ, SV etc.) already using the Plaza Premium lounge, and AF/KL join them?
  I remember the T4 SkyTeam lounge getting busy in the evenings before the east bound long hauls MU, CZ (before they left SkyTeam), KE etc + the usual AF/KL/AZ. When was it busy with DL passengers? As DL has been in T3 for a long time with VS.
  Is there really any benefit for an AMS/CDG-USA (and vice versa) passenger flying VS/DL via LHR for an AF/KL to CDG/AMS? Surely most would fly direct AF/KL/DL to/from CDG/AMS.

  • Bob says:

    24 Mar24 March 20:14

    And there is only 5 flights per day LHR CDG compared to 12 some 20 years ago…

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