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Lounges at LAD - Luanda, Angola

Lounges at LAD - Luanda, Angola

Old Sep 24, 2008, 2:57 am
  #1  
hjb
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Lounges at LAD - Luanda, Angola

I understand Luanda airport has 2 lounges, TAAP & 3rd party. Since my employer is a miserly ....... I'll be flying economy... does anyone know if either lounge takes any credit card / priority pass / other plan? I'm essentially willing to sell my soul to get access to clean toilets (But no, upgrading to business isn't an option due to company policy)
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Old Sep 24, 2008, 8:51 am
  #2  
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hjb, welcome to FlyerTalk. Let me move this to our Travel->Africa forum for added help. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.
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Old Sep 28, 2008, 1:55 am
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There are clean toilets in the lounge at LAD? Must have missed them...

Seriously though, try to make your stay at LAD airport as short as possible. An hour or so in the general holding area is not impossible to deal with if you bring a magazine. The lounges are no different except for some shrink wrapped mysetery snacks.
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Old Sep 28, 2008, 2:07 am
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Thanks B747-437B. I'll be connecting in LAD so I suspect the duration of my stay will not be within my control. Oh well, if you can't have a good time at least you can collect some good stories, right?

Sounds like you know LAD quite well - any other tips you'd pass on? This will be my first African assignment after mostly Middle East locations
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Old Sep 28, 2008, 1:09 pm
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Originally Posted by hjb
Sounds like you know LAD quite well - any other tips you'd pass on? This will be my first African assignment after mostly Middle East locations
Thankfully LAD and myself have only met twice, but I can honestly say that having been to dozens of cities around Africa, it was undoubtedly the most dismal one.

The best thing to do in Luanda is leave. Make sure you have $50 to bribe the guy at the TAAG desk to let you check in. Don't carry any local currency 'cos they will check your wallet at the gate and steal it from you.

And all this was traveling on a diplomatic trip as guests of the Government of Angola. I can only imagine what the other poor .......s went through.
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Old Oct 6, 2008, 10:20 am
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hjb are you flying into LAD too? If so I have a few tips on how to make that as painless as possible.
For departures, the main waiting area isn't too bad: there's a bar and cafe which has so far failed to poison me. The toilets are awful (for an airport) but fairly standard for a 3rd world country.
Re local currency: it is illegal to take local currency out of Angola, so make sure you have none left when you leave.
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Old Oct 18, 2008, 7:22 pm
  #7  
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Thanks csdf - yes I'll be travelling in & out of LAD for the next few years. Not the part of the assignment I'm most looking forward to! I'll report back after my first trip in later this month
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Old Oct 19, 2008, 2:31 am
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I flew into LAD last week. I had the impression that, on arrival, things were a bit better than before. It looks as if they cleaned the immigration waiting area a bit. Also, less mosquitoes (but maybe thats a seasonal thing). Other improvement: there were now 2 medics available to look at your yellow fever papers and stamp the entry form. (Previously there was always one poor fellow that got completely overwhelmed when they dumped 200+ people in front of him )

But the lines for immigration are still as slow as before

One tip I can give you: check the schedules for the few airlines that fly there and avoid the days when several flights arrive more or less at the same time. (I personally avoid arriving Tuesday morning: AF and TP arriving more or less together)
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Old Oct 19, 2008, 2:35 am
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Originally Posted by hjb
I'll be connecting in LAD so I suspect the duration of my stay will not be within my control.
One question: do you connect to a national Angolan flight, or internationally? If internationally, forget about what I said in my previous post. It won’t matter for you…

Last edited by Koby; Oct 19, 2008 at 2:36 am Reason: spelling
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Old Oct 20, 2008, 10:07 am
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Tips for flying into LAD:
- Try to sit as far forward as you can in your cabin, to ensure you get off the plane earlier.
- Make sure you have your yellow-fever certificate to hand (I have travelled with people who forgot to bring it - boy was that entertaining)
- Get your YF certificate stamped as quickly as possible
- Join a queue for immigration & watch out you don't accidentally join the diplomatic line (the one on the far left when I last went through)
- Once you're through immigration, pick up your bag (which will probably get through before you do) and make sure you have the luggage receipt (the sticky thing on your boarding pass) as you exit, as they check that your receipt matches the label on your luggage
- Be prepared for someone to do a customs screening after this point
- (Hopefully) meet your driver - sometimes, depending on who you're travelling for, your driver will meet you at one of the points above. Certainly the oilco drivers tend to.
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Old Oct 24, 2008, 2:54 am
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Originally Posted by csdf
watch out you don't accidentally join the diplomatic line (the one on the far left when I last went through)
I went in once on an official government trip (but NOT on a diplomatic passport) and DIDN'T use that line -- oh dear, you should have seen the furore and confusion this created. If it wasn't for the protocol officer being present and pleading my case, I was convinced they were going to drag me outside and shoot me.

Luanda is always good for some road warrior stories though, I'll grant them that...
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Old Nov 3, 2008, 12:52 pm
  #12  
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I wanted to report back now that I am safely in Angola for the next few months. The Houston Express was great - we were on the back up plane so there were plenty of economy seats. I had a window row (3 seats) to myself and it seemed like some business class passengers were instead in the middle row (4 seats) - I base this assumption on comments here & because I was able to see they had better movie/TV choices, their food was exactly the same.

We arrived an hour late & no-one else was there. I just followed the crowd, I think ending up in a diplomat line but no-one cared, I went where I was told. Immigration was easy, my baggage was there almost immediately and all in all I thought the airport was fine. Certainly better than the likes of Damascus or Kiev when I first went there 4+ yrs ago. Now watch how I've jinxed myself for the next flight

The domestic flight the next morning was a different story but all my luggage arrived on the same flight, the toilet was clean when I used it before we took off, and the sandwich was edible so even that wasn't so bad.

Thanks for all the tips - I admit I was nervous but in the end I've had far worse experiences. Now to get used to sub-Saharan Africa for a few years
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Old Nov 13, 2008, 4:27 pm
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Lounges at LAD

I departed from LAD this week (on TAP Air Portugal). Some feedback on the lounges at LAD (the original question).

TAP (together with the other Star Alliance airlines) uses the TAAG lounge. It offers a basic selection of snacks and drinks. The seating is also basic. No quiet separated corners or anything. (I found one nice area with comfy sofas, but got kicked out after half an hour or so. Apparently it is reserved for first class passengers)
The air condition works good enough to limit the number of mosquitoes
More important: they have 4 (working) PCs with an Internet connection.
Overall it beats the general waiting area with its one (1) bar. However, there seems to be no possibility to get in when flying economy. There is no option for cash payment, and theyve never heard of Priority Pass.

The other lounge that Ive found is called PALL or so. Its the one you'll see when you turn right (180) after walking up the stairs. Im not sure who uses it. Maybe they work with contracts directly with some of the oil companies, because when I tried to get in he asked for the name of my company rather than for the airline.
Anyway, you could get in for 20 US$. Again, mentioning Priority Pass was met a blank stare
I did not want to spend 20$ to get in just to be able to report on FT. But if it offers at least the same as the TAAG lounge, I would pay the money when travelling economy. (Especially since usually at LAD they drop me off at the airport at least 3 hours before the flight leaves)

Hope this helps some of you
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Old Nov 27, 2008, 11:08 pm
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My experiences at LAD are nowhere as dismal or morose or scary as others' experiences seem to be. I've never had to bribe anyone for anything, etc. The airport is a pithole no matter how one looks at it, but it's doable. If one has access to one of the lounges on outbounds, more power to you, and I would consider taking my own life if I didn't have lounge access. The positive bag ID on checked luggage on outbounds is equally annoying. However, as with much of Africa, if you go with the mindset that you'll simply go with the flow, do what you're told within reason (like wait in a coulple of useless lines, etc.), there should not be any problems - or have not been for me, or a close relative who veritably commutes there (for Big Oil) and spends way too much time in Luanda.

Inbound immy is indeed a bear, never found a way around that one.

For the outbound, I've never had to wait for more than 30 minutes to get to checkin (flights are always/only on Air Namibia C and TAAG F), and never more than 20 minutes to pass immy - and I'm not nearly as important as others who have been travelling on Serious Government Business as Guests of the Nation, etc. I'm just a businessman with just a plain passport. To say that the best thing to do in LAD is leave is small-minded. Is it depressing? Sure. But it's survivable, and always is - and sometimes it's even interesting.
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Old Dec 1, 2008, 3:56 am
  #15  
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Arriving can be nasty, unpleasant, crowded. Though it really has improved. Relax into it, you will get through!

Leaving the place is fine - just don't fight the system. It works: you don't need to understand it or help fix it.

I have never been asked for a bribe greater greater than a ball-point pen - even then it was a low key, no pressure "you have so many of these, my kids could use one" in the personal search cubicle.

The TAAG lounge is perfectly OK - it can get crowded, but just about everything you might expect from a lounge is there.
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