I spend a lot of time in airports. I am still a pilot, of planes, though not airliners, and of helicopters, and depending on the day I find myself on the other side of the glass, in the cockpit, or in the queue like everyone else. I say this because I know both points of view well: that of someone who knows why a flight is late, and that of someone who, suitcase in hand, stares at the departures board hoping something will change.
There is a moment in every trip that no programme ever mentions: the hours between check-in and boarding. They do not appear in itineraries, they are not part of the experience you paid for, and yet they make up a bigger share of it than you would think. Two hours before the flight, an hour of delay, a long connection: added together, on an average trip, they are worth half a day. Half a day that almost everyone spends on a plastic chair, next to a socket that does not work, paying as much for a coffee as for a lunch.
Waiting as no man’s land
The airport has a strange nature. It is not a place, it is a passage. You have already left but you have not yet arrived, and so you do not know how to behave. You cannot really work, you cannot really rest, you cannot even read in peace, with an announcement interrupting you every three minutes.
When you are twenty it is a detail: you lie down on a backpack and that is fine. But if you are past forty, or fifty, and you fly fairly often, you discover that the wait weighs on you. It weighs on your back, on your mood and on your patience. Above all it weighs on the trip ahead, because you reach your destination already a little worn, as if you had made a small effort before even starting.
This is where the lounge comes in. Not as a status symbol, which interests me little, but as a practical solution to a practical problem: giving those hours a place.
What really changes
I am talking about what I see and live, without getting carried away. A good lounge offers you simple things: a real armchair, a connection that holds, something to eat and drink without having to count the cost, a clean bathroom, sometimes a shower. Nothing extraordinary, on paper. But together, these things change the tone of the whole day.
It changes the way you arrive at the gate. It changes what you can do in the meantime: answer emails calmly, call home, sort the photos from the trip you have just finished, or do nothing at all, and do it well. And above all it changes how you perceive a delay. An extra hour in a quiet room is a setback. An extra hour in the terminal corridor is a sentence.
Then there is something I underestimated and only understood with time: the lounge lowers the noise level, and I do not just mean decibels. Fewer crowds, less rushing, less anxiety about not finding a seat. It is a small anxiety, but a constant one, and taking it out of the day has an effect that is more noticeable than you would think.
A subscription: worth it or not?
Here you have to be honest, because this is where many people let an advert convince them. A lounge subscription is not worth it for everyone, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
It is worth it if you fly often, or if, even when you fly little, you tend to have long waits. It is worth it if you travel regularly for work, or if over the year you take several long trips with significant layovers. It is less worth it if you take two flights a year, always at convenient times, from a small airport.
The right way to reason is simple, and I learned it by doing the sums: look at how many times you really fly in a year, how much a single visit costs, how much the subscription costs, and do the division. Then add what no table will tell you: how much it is worth to you to arrive rested. If the answer is “a lot”, the sums change.
The questions to ask first
Here too it pays to be wary of anyone who promises too much. There are a few questions I would ask before signing up to any subscription.
The first: which airports can I actually get into? Not the total number of lounges, but the ones on my usual routes. The second: are there limits on time, on visits per year or on opening hours? Some services limit how long you can stay, and anyone with a long connection finds out at the worst moment. The third: can I bring a guest, and on what terms? If you travel as a couple or with a child, it is the difference between an advantage and a half rip-off. The fourth, the one almost nobody asks: what happens when the lounge is full? It happens, especially at peak times, and access that does not guarantee entry is worth less than it seems.
The journey starts earlier
What changed me most in all this was a small realisation: the journey does not start when you take off, it starts when you leave home. And everything in between, the road, the car park, the security checks, the wait, is part of that journey, whether you like it or not.
For years I thought of those hours as time to sacrifice, a toll to pay to get somewhere else. Then I started treating them as time to live, and the difference was bigger than I expected. Not because the lounge is magic, but because it gives back something you usually lose at the airport: choice. You can decide whether to work or rest, whether to eat or wait, whether to stay quiet or chat with someone.
So, is it worth it?
It depends on how you travel, and I distrust anyone who gives the same answer to everyone. If you fly little, keep your money and bring a good book. If you fly often, or if you have reached the age when comfort is no longer a luxury but a condition for enjoying things, do the sums seriously.
And if in the end you find that the wait, once a burden, has become a break you look forward to, you have already gained something no travel programme can promise you: a better start.
