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British Airways opens a ‘Concorde Room Lite’ at Heathrow Terminal 3 – but not for Gold Guest List

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The rumours, it seems, were half-true. British Airways has opened a ‘Concorde Room Lite’ at Heathrow Terminal 3 but it hasn’t gone down well with many travellers.

The Concorde Room, for those who don’t know, is the lounge in Terminal 5 which is exclusively for the use of passengers travelling in First Class or those holding Gold Guest List or Premier status with British Airways.

(The Galleries First lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5 isn’t actually meant for anyone flying in First Class. It’s effectively the Gold Card lounge.)

British Airways is moving an increasing number of long haul flights over to Terminal 3.

Any regular HfP reader will know that there are some excellent lounges in Terminal 3 which can be used by BA elite members or anyone flying in Business or First.

You have the Qantas lounge (and, from 2025, a separate Qantas First Class lounge) and the Cathay Pacific Business and First Class lounges. These are well ahead of the BA offerings, and BA is charged a fee – rumoured to be over £100 – whenever a BA traveller uses them.

You also have two poor American Airlines lounges (reviews here and here) but I doubt many BA passengers are bothering with those. They are very quiet, however.

Terminal 3 now has a ‘Concorde Room Lite’ – but Gold Guest List members are banned

The British Airways lounge in Terminal 3 is split into a Business and First area. The First area, as per Terminal 5, is effectively the Gold Card lounge because until this month British Airways had no flights from Terminal 3 with First Class.

As per our most recent review, it is absolutely nothing to get excited about.

What has changed is that part of the First lounge has now been blocked out, given a coat of paint and relaunched as a ‘Concorde Room Lite’.

(EDIT: It turns out that the official name is ‘First Dining Room’)

Intriguingly, only the following people are allowed access:

  • anyone flying in First Class on a oneworld flight, plus a guest

British Airways Gold Guest List members, who have Concorde Room access in Terminal 5, are NOT allowed to access this area.

The decision seems to be down to space, as the area only has a reported 12 tables. It is in the small room behind the bar:

BA Galleries First Heathrow T3 window seating

It’s worth noting that there are only 16 BA First Class seats flying out of Terminal 3 per day (eight to Bermuda, eight to Bahrain). It’s not as if British Airways needed to create an extra lounge space to keep its First Class passengers happy.

A reader sent us a full suite of photographs this morning, so we will run a follow-up article tomorrow to show GGL members what they are missing.


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Comments (107)

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

  • drdan says:

    I’m flying T3 to Prague in Economy as a silver shortly…. Which lounge would people recommend settle for rather than a lounge-hop?

    • Rob says:

      See what time Qantas is running its full meal service – may be your best bet. Qantas is a halfway house (when the restaurant is running) between Cathay Business and Cathay First.

    • CT says:

      Going to go against the flow as I have used the BA lounge twice in the last week (as had 3 silvers with me) The food at breakfast was as good in the BA lounge as the CX it was much quieter and also help yourself bar. The Qantas lounge bar gets too busy for my liking these days and again a self service bar is better for me..

      • NorthernLass says:

        If it’s at breakfast time, I thoroughly recommend Eggs Benedict in the Qantas lounge when table service starts at 9.30 am. We were there at Easter and it was really quiet at that time. You can settle at your table and the servers seem to bring you anything you ask for pretty much instantaneously!

        • lumma says:

          +1 I was always a bit meh about the Qantas lounge until I visited when the downstairs bar was open. Had a great server and didn’t even bother with any of the other lounges that day

  • His Holyness says:

    Why would lounge payments between carriers not be paid via the IATA clearing house the same way INVOL is covered?

    BA send 100 pax to CX, CX send 80 pax to BA, BA therefore owe CX for 20 pax at a clear rate based on the lounge level. I’d expect this to look this way for the whole world.

    All billed of course to the operating carrier.

    • Nick says:

      Because there are no accountable documents to process for it, and without those you can’t handle the clearing process.

  • Rob says:

    Just some casual observations…something is definitely afoot in T3. BA recently advertised for a Head of Customer Experience T3 (or something similar) and anyone who’s been in the F lounge at T3 recently will have noticed the improvements in furniture etc. I think it’s looking much better. Service in the lounge still woeful however.

    Had a nice chat with an AA team member in T3 recently who admitted to escorting AA premium pax into the CX F lounge for ‘better service’. Whilst I won’t miss what I never had, as previously quoted, it seems at best yet another BA own goal. Given the extreme low usage of this lounge, they could have created a proper CCR. I might even have stayed and ditched the lounge tour.

  • Paul says:

    So the return of what was there before a few years ago? GGL CCR Card didn’t have access back then either.

  • mvcvz says:

    As a humble BA Silver of many years (save two or three when I was busy enough to be Gold), I always find the BA lounges at LHR to be just fine. I only require one seat for my unfortunately ample backside. I really don’t mind how many of the other seats are similarly occupied, as I don’t suffer from the delusion that I own the place.

  • Sussex Engineer says:

    I was in their flying business class to Bahrain, on Sunday, with a gold card. I was allowed into the lounge but blocked to enter the empty restaurant. As you say Cathay Pacific first class lounge, with restaurant, is just a few metres down the corridor. So off I went to get decent food.

    BA had not communicated this change. I am so pleased to hear that BA get charged £100 for me to use this facility. As soon as I ate in the very pleasant Cathay Pacific dining room, I went back to the BA lounge to have a glass of champagne or two. This is what I plan, now to continue to do on my many flights.

  • boredflyer says:

    I’m there now and it looks nicer than the previous photos – new bar table, white tablecloths and the usual William Edwards crockery, LPGS etc. Around 200 first class ticketed people are eligible to enter every day, so with such a small area I can see why GGLs are restricted.

    • Rob says:

      That’s nonsense though. A maximum of 16 (and realistically 6-8) of those are BA flyers. The rest are Cathay Pacific, American Airlines, JAL etc who have no reason to bother with a BA facility.

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