Originally Posted by
themax
I have spent A LOT of time passing through this lounge (sometimes weekly). It is not the best BA lounge in the network by any means, but it is still one of the better BA lounges catering to ET/CE travellers. There ARE comfy seats and sofas, and despite earlier comments to the contrary the lounge actually serves more substantial meals then most other BA club lounges on the continent. Breakfast consists of hot eggs, sausages, and potatoes (as well as cold meats, cheese, fruit, pastries, etc). For lunch and dinner they usually serve a hot rice or pasta dish, meat, and some sort of vegetarian option as well as cold sandwiches and side salads. The food isn't amazing, but is MUCH better then I have had at other BA lounges around the world.
Quite frankly, if people are advising you not to use this lounge because the toilets are "public" you might want to question their judgement. Yes, you need to leave the lounge to use the toilet, but only other lounge users (KLM, AF, etc) also use the same toilets because the lounges are at the end of a dead end passageway that the general public does not pass by. (and yes, the toilets are clean and no better/worse then anything you would find in an average airport lounge).
All of this being said, 6 hours in any airport lounge (even the CCR at LHR) is too much for me. If you have the time to kill you might want to follow the above advice and check out Geneva. It's a 10 minute express train ride to/from GVA and there is plenty to do/see at or near the main train station (and the Mont Blanc bridge/crossing with a spectacular view of the lake and Geneva and nearby France is less than a 3 minute walk from the station). As stated above, you can leave your bag in a locker at GVA train station without any problems.
The BA check-in staff are not the friendliest at GVA (they wear BA uniforms but work for DNATA); they do enforce the 3 hour check-in window (not because they are trying to be difficult but because they don't have the holding capacity to accept very early bags in advance of the many flights on BA they process per day). The lounge is another matter; yes, the notice on the door says 3 hours (but that's because some skiers travel by shared bus to the airport on the day of departure and try to spend the entire day at the airport). They also have a local rule denying GC holders a guest when the lounge is very busy. Nevertheless, if the lounge is not busy the day you are there then there is no reason they won't let you in before the 3 hour limit.....I have done it MANY times.
i agree with you that the lounge is not that bad. On the airport and staff lounge attitude , however, your experience is different from mine. Now you say that you use the airport/ lounge frequently and I suspect that this may precisely be the reason. I find GVA one of the unfriendliest managed ba stations and I suspect that precisely, part of it is to be difficult (not in the sense of mean but in the sense of the attitude of the ba station managers). That includes the lounge and at least one of the regular lounge attendants would not allow you in if you are, to take an example mentioned above, on a Saturday in August. In fact I’ve had pretty much that experience and that was as GGL travelling On an F ticket (obviously CE from GVA). The lounge was mostly empty both at the time I asked and when I came back an hour later and all the way to my Departure. Maybe they are more flexible with you if you are a regular enough that they would at least subconsciously recognise you (I know I do get better treatment than most occasional visitors in the lounges at my main airport where most if not all staff recognise me by sight) but as someone who visits GVA about 3-5 times a year, ie enough to have had many experiences but not enough to be recognised, me experience of staff acting on behalf of ba at both check in and lounge has been generally execrable and by and large my worst in Europe.