Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

See inside Newcastle’s lovely new Aspire, Luxe by Aspire and Suite by Aspire lounges

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Earlier this month I was invited to Newcastle Airport for the official launch of THREE new Aspire lounges at the airport.

The abandoned British Airways space has been combined with the old Aspire lounge to create something new – the first three-tier independent airport lounge in the UK, and perhaps anywhere.

Let’s take a look.

Aspire Lounge Newcastle Airport

All of the photographs here are official pictures. The main Aspire lounge was fully operational (emphasis on the ‘full’) when we were there. Whilst the two premium spaces were closed for the event, there were so many invitees that it was busier than it will be on a normal day!

What are the three lounges at Newcastle Airport?

The entire Aspire complex is 1,135 square metres and the combined total capacity is 329 passengers.

It is a three tier system. At the top end is Suite by Aspire, with waiter-served food. The only airline using this space is Emirates which has a daily flight at 2.15pm. It costs £60 to book for cash or – and I think this is decent value – £22 to upgrade a Priority Pass visit. Children cannot use Suite by Aspire unless they are ticketed Emirates premium passengers.

The middle tier is Luxe by Aspire. This has been contracted to British Airways, KLM and Air France. It cannot be booked outright for cash but you can pay £15 to upgrade a Priority Pass visit. Children cannot use Luxe by Aspire unless they are ticketed premium cabin or status passengers.

The main lounge is simply branded Aspire. This is for Priority Pass customers. A dedicated corner of 47 seats will be allocated at certain times to Tui for passengers in its 47-seat Premium cabin. This costs £44 (yes, £44) to book for cash.

All three lounges open at 4am and close between 6pm and 9pm depending on the day of the week and time of year.

Aspire Lounge Newcastle Airport

Some random facts from my trip ….

  • The average ‘dwell time’ at Aspire lounges in the UK is 1 hour and 53 minutes. Experience shows that a refurbished or otherwise ‘improved’ lounge will see a 20 minute increase in dwell time – people arrive earlier when they know there is a decent lounge.
  • 25% of Aspire lounge users in the UK are flying with Ryanair
  • 68% of Aspire lounge users in the UK only use a lounge on departure, not on the return (Aspire sees this as an opportunity although it does not fully understand why it happens)
  • The demographic of users skews towards the older – younger people are, for cost or other reasons, less interested in paying for an airport lounge
  • Aspire is looking at ways of allowing lounge users to purchase duty free via a tablet and have it delivered to them at their seat

The Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

The two photos above are of the main lounge and here are three more:

Aspire Lounge Newcastle Airport

and

Aspire Lounge Newcastle Airport

and

Aspire Lounge Newcastle Airport

The food island (visible in the second picture down from the top) is, apparently, the largest in the entire Aspire UK estate. There is no shortage of food here. Aspire is trialling the use of staff headsets, allowing the kitchen to be told quickly when items need replacing.

‘Paid to order’ premium food and drink is available

Because Aspire needs to run a full kitchen to supply Luxe and Suite, it is able to offer a wide ‘pay to order’ menu on top of the buffet.

£8 will get you a freshly cooked bacon cheeseburger, a chicken burger or a vegan burger, all served with sweet potato fries. Alternatively you can have a margherita, pepperoni or gluten-free pepperoni 12 inch pizza for the same price. £7 gets you some chicken bits or chicken popcorn with sweet potato fries.

£2 gets you a premium drink, eg Hendricks or Bombay Sapphire gin, Grey Goose vodka, 12yr Glenfiddich whisky, Disaronno or Baileys. There is also a selection of premium beers for £3.

£5 gets you a cocktail such as a peach bellini, aperol spritz or old fashioned.

Prosecco is £6 per glass or £19 per bottle. Champagne (the brand wasn’t stated) is £55 per bottle.

The ‘Luxe by Aspire’ lounge at Newcastle Airport

Luxe is where you will head if you are flying British Airways in business class, have British Airways Silver or Gold status or are connecting to a British Airways Club World or First flight.

You cannot pay cash to enter this lounge although you can upgrade a Priority Pass visit for £15.

Luxe has more relaxed seating and a higher quality of self-serve drinks. Sparkling wine is included although you will pay for champagne (I think). You also have airfield views and access to a dedicated Luxe / Suite set of toilets.

Spirits on display for self-pour included Bacardi, Gordons, Hennessy VS, Malibu, Grey Goose, Whitley Neill Gin (rhubard and ginger flavour!), Jack Daniel’s, Baileys, Lambs, Captain Morgan, Bombay Sapphire, Hendricks, Famous Grouse and Disaronno.

Here are some images:

The Luxe by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

and

The Luxe by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

and

The Luxe by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

and

The Luxe by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

The ‘Suite by Aspire’ lounge at Newcastle Airport

Suite by Aspire is the top-tier product, currently only available to premium cabin and elite status passengers flying with Emirates.

Priority Pass holders can upgrade for £22 and non-Priority Pass holders can buy access for £60. The Emirates flight departs at 2.15pm so I suspect it will be at its busiest between 11.30am and 1.30pm. Looking at the Aspire website, cash bookings are not allowed at this time anyway.

Suite is effectively a separate area within the Luxe / Suite part of the lounge, albeit blocked off from Luxe via the furnishings. This area has the best views of the airfield as you can see.

The Suites by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

and

The Suites by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

and

The Suites by Aspire lounge at Newcastle Airport

The key selling point here is table service food and drink which is rarely seen in UK airport lounges, even airline ones. That said, it’s not ‘fine dining’.

The lunch and dinner menu had three sections:

  • ‘light bites’ (ham hock terrine, avocado salad, ceasar salad, club sandwich)
  • mains (bacon cheeseburger, chicken burger, miso ramen, chicken singapore noodles, pizza, cottage pie, sweet potato and chickpea curry)
  • desserts (ice cream, sticky toffee pudding, Eton mess cheesecake, chocolate orange torte and a cheese board).

Additional ‘nibbles’ are also available – freshly baked cookies, popcorn, charcuterie, mini savoury tartlets and mini gourmandises.

You can, of course, also help yourself from the buffet in the Luxe area.

I didn’t see a breakfast menu but the website says:

Suite guests can choose a dish from a selection of made-to-order dishes, such as Eggs Benedict, our Continental breakfast, and Avocado Toast in the morning.

Conclusion

Aspire has done a fantastic job here, without a doubt. Even if you are ‘just’ in the main Aspire lounge, you will be in a lovely space with a lot of food, a large bar and the ability to pay for more substantial meals.

It’s to the credit of British Airways and KLM / Air France that they both agreed to pay for the smarter Luxe section to get the project off the ground. This area has impressive views, good seating and a decent selection of food and drink.

‘Suite’ is more of a gamble for Aspire, given that Emirates is the only contracted user. That said, it is arguably a decent deal for the £22 upgrade fee if you have a Priority Pass or DragonPass. If it doesn’t work out it can easily be merged into Luxe outside of the Emirates hours.

Aspire told me that it is in discussions with other airports about introducing Luxe and Suite alongside its existing standard lounges, so hopefully we will see the concept rolled out further.

You can book the standard Aspire lounge or ‘Suite by Aspire’ for cash on the executivelounges.com website here.


Getting airport lounge access for free from a credit card

How to get FREE airport lounge access via UK credit cards (February 2025)

Here are the five options to get FREE airport lounge access via a UK credit card.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with two free Priority Pass cards, one for you and one for a supplementary cardholder. Each card admits two so a family of four gets in free. You get access to all 1,500 lounges in the Priority Pass network – search it here.

You also get access to Eurostar, Lufthansa and Delta Air Lines lounges.  Our American Express Platinum review is here.

You can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for the first year. It comes with a Priority Pass card loaded with four free visits to any Priority Pass lounge – see the list here.

Additional lounge visits are charged at £24.  You get four more free visits for every year you keep the card.  

There is no annual fee for Amex Gold in Year 1 and you get a 20,000 points sign-up bonus.  Full details are in our American Express Preferred Rewards Gold review here.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard gets you get a free Priority Pass card, allowing you access to the Priority Pass network.  Guests are charged at £24 although it may be cheaper to pay £60 for a supplementary credit card for your partner.

The card has a fee of £290 and there are strict financial requirements to become a HSBC Premier customer.  Full details are in my HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard review.

HSBC Premier World Elite Mastercard

A good package, but only available to HSBC Premier clients Read our full review

Got a small business?

If you have a small business, consider American Express Business Platinum which has the same lounge benefits as the personal Platinum card:

American Express Business Platinum

50,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

You should also consider the Capital on Tap Pro Visa credit card which has a lower fee and, as well as a Priority Pass for airport lounge access, also comes with Radison Rewards VIP hotel status:

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

PS. You can find all of HfP’s UK airport lounge reviews – and we’ve been to most of them – indexed here.

Comments (54)

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

  • Can2 says:

    First I thought this was Newcastle, NSW. In the UK we don’t deserve lounges like that :))

  • Charlie says:

    The middle tier is a good lounge. Though not as amazing as some commentators are currently suggesting. The food, in particular, is poor. Staff are brilliant, although the ‘digital tip box’ on the front desk is a bit naff. The setup is not as good as the previous BA lounge was, and if you are comparing NCL with EDI, the BA lounge at EDI wins hands down, in my view. Having said that, in the last four months, Newcastle has opened full 3D scanners, new early and late bus services have been introduced (e.g.: 777 from Morpeth/Ponteland onwards) which drop you right outside the airport’s front door, meaning, for me, I can be from my front door on a country road in the middle of Northumberland to sipping a coffee in the new airport lounge in just over half an hour. And that is superb. Over time, I suspect there will be a merging of the top two Aspire tiers into one, due to a poor food offering across all three tiers, and minimal differentiation between those tiers, unless Aspire up their food game.

    • Antony Savvas says:

      Use Newcastle all the time after junking Manchester because of the bad train service from North Yorkshire.

      The staff have always been friendly and welcoming up there, but the food in the BA area is no better than the old area, it’s probably worse in some ways, particularly in the evenings when the limited finger food is all dried out.

      The sitting space is a big improvement as it is now quiet from being away from most of the holiday crowd, but there are still few power points.

      The new mixed toilets are a big improvement than the very smelly and leaky ones before.

      But I really am sick of fake carbonara and cheap veg curry that a five year old would turn their nose up at.

      The breakfast is also poor, with sausages like lead, dry buns, tasteless scrambled eggs, and unevenly cooked bacon – I prefer it crispy.

      There are no packaged snacks in the BA section either, no doubt because Aspire doesn’t want you to ‘steal’ them.

      But, Newcastle is still better to fly from than Manchester!

      • TimM says:

        Any airport, globally, is better than Manchester.

        I will be trying the new 1903 lounge at Manchester T2 in September. For me, the lounges at Manchester are just a brief respite from the sheer awfulness of the ‘Manchester Airport Experience’.

  • r* says:

    Is there anyone that actually prefers sweet potato fries over regular potato?

    And ‘premium drink’ and ‘baileys’ should never exist in the same sentence 😀

    Cant help but think it wouldve been better to just have the 1 lounge with more space tho in terms of priority pass access, tho presumably the lounge will make more from the amount they will charge the airlines.

    • TimM says:

      “And ‘premium drink’ and ‘baileys’ should never exist in the same sentence”

      Baileys is over-priced Irish cream, so, in a sense it is ‘premium’. There are far better Irish creams at lower prices in the supermarkets. Some like brand names. I follow my nose and taste buds.

  • AliR says:

    Agree with most of the comments here. Fly BA semi regularly either LHR to/from NCL or MAN – the latter being slightly closer. NCL is for me probably the finest UK airport – and for a regional airport the Aspire Luxe lounge is is excellent. Buffet food is a bit ‘department store self serve’ but drinks selection, staff, seating comfort, overall ambiance all very good indeed. Added to which the security area and new scanners make Newcastle Airport an absolute pleasure to use. It certainly encourages me to travel to or via northeast more than I would’ve done previously. Great job!

  • Kevin says:

    Third time through since refurb began. First time was with BA in the partially opened section which is now middle tier. Last time and right now is in the main area. Obviously comparing now to last year, well, there’s no comparison……it’s very different…..in a good way.

    Drinks are an issue I guess. Paying extra for something that isn’t basic is a bit off, but Mrs Moreimportantthanme is not classing a glass as Prosecco as being a premium drink. They are taking a bit of a liberty charging £7 on top for the go to travelling ladies drink!

    The only other negative is the atrocious hot food offering previously mentioned. From an optics point of view, my dog was very poorly last week…..so I nearly picked the food up with a poo bag! Pasta bake you could use to clad a new tower block and prevent fire, and a veg curry that, although tasting ‘ok’ just looked awful. That and a baked potato……small size…..and that was it. Embarrassing for a having done so much with the refurb.

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.