Originally Posted by
iahphx
I looked at the board: Alaska has about 5 flights that leave out of ANC in a 3 hour period after 10 pm. Can a lounge not handle 5 (narrowbody) flights? I actually went back twice to see what was going on. At no time did the lounge reach 50% occupancy. I pointed out the vast sea of empty seats to the agent, and she said they don't include "scattered" empty seats in their calculations -- apparently the whole lounge needs to be open for them to admit PP guests.
Obviously, if they want to run their lounge at 50% occupancy, that's their prerogative. But they shouldn't be in Priority Pass. It did suck to arrive at 9:30 pm for a 2 hour layoff and be surprised that I had no lounge access. Last week, there was no problem getting in at 9 am.
Coincidentally, I was also denied entry into an Alaska Lounge at SEA this month that looked way less than half full. It was morgue-like in there. But I wasn't completely surprised, given that I had heard of PP "problems" at their SEA lounges. And there are other lounge options at SEA. At ANC, you're sitting around a gate if you can't get into the Alaska Lounge.
The singular reason given by AS for denying PP entry is due to lounge occupancy issues, but there are way too many reports of half empty lounges with the sign out for this to be the only reason for the issue they're having with PP....for whatever reason, it's obvious they don't want to be apart of the PP program and that's their decision, but I think they need to just pull the band-aid off and be done with it. Perhaps their thinking is that if lounges are empty, it will create a better sense of solitude for their members and they'll make up for lost PP revenue with more memberships (although personally, I think this is going to end up being a money losing deal, but for their sake, hopefully not).