Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles - Red Carpet Club and THY Lounge

Hello all,

I'm a lowly Star Silver who would not normally have access to loungers, but I am a Red Carpet Club member with United which gets me into most Star Alliance Lounges when I am traveling on that carrier. There's a long list of lounges I can use at http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,3113,00.html but it seems to miss Turkish Airlines (and Egypt Air). United is often bad about updating their website...so I don't know if I can get into to the THY lounge in Istanbul (and the one in Riyadh if there is one). Any information would be greatly appreciated. I am also going to bug the people on the United forum.

Many thanks,

Rafi

Hello all,

I'm a lowly Star Silver who would not normally have access to loungers, but I am a Red Carpet Club member with United which gets me into most Star Alliance Lounges when I am traveling on that carrier. There's a long list of lounges I can use at http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,3113,00.html but it seems to miss Turkish Airlines (and Egypt Air). United is often bad about updating their website...so I don't know if I can get into to the THY lounge in Istanbul (and the one in Riyadh if there is one). Any information would be greatly appreciated. I am also going to bug the people on the United forum.

Many thanks,

Rafi

The THY Lounge in IST is designated Star Alliance Gold, whether RCC is entitled for that particular lounge I do not know. There's another (commercial) lounge at the other end of the terminal, Bankasi Millenium Lounge, but I don't think UA is in it (SQ and a few other Star Alliance are in it tho).

As for RUH, there are no Star Alliance designated lounges. In fact, I don't recall any other lounges apart from one commercial lounge. Seems to be open to most if not all airlines and from what I've been told, even to Y passengers willing to cough out a fee, something like 40-50 SAR per person I think. Internet connection back in 2004-2007 was antiquated to say the least: I think it was 28.8kbps dial up from 1 or 2 workstations. God knows how many hours I wasted in that hole of an airport - a few days total at least, maybe even a whole week.

As the previous poster commented the THY lounge has *Gold access. I have never tried using my RCC card since I automatically pull out the *Gold. However since so many other Star Alliance carriers do allow entrance with the RCC it is worth trying. There are other lounges that are tied to local bank cards such as HSBC. Good luck.