As I still had some leftover Sixt Ride credit (which is a feature of Amex Platinum in Germany), I decided not to take the train to the airport, but instead order a taxi on the Sixt app, which would, thanks to the credit, be more or less free. After a somewhat circumstantial procedure, I was dropped off in front of the terminal entrance at Düsseldorf International airport. Despite the time of shortly past 7 in the morning on a regular Thursday, the terminal was actually quite empty, and there were no queues at the check in counters for Air France. Checking my bag took about a minute, and as soon as I had my baggage receipt, I proceeded towards the concourse B security checkpoint.
To my utter surprise, there was literally nobody waiting for the security check (usually, you can expect wait times of up to 20 minutes, particularly in the morning), and the security staff even had to stand up from their chairs just in order to check me. This really is a date that should be marked in my calendar.
Since I had booked an economy class ticket to Paris and don’t have any status with SkyTeam, I didn’t have any lounge access from my ticket, so I decided to use the PriorityPass that is also included in my Amex Platinum membership for the first time and visit the Hugo Junkers Lounge, which is the only lounge in concourse B and also the contract lounge for all airlines (except Eurowings) departing from concourse B. I had already visited the lounge a few years ago, and not much seemed to have changed.
The lounge basically is one single room, which is slightly smaller than the Lufthansa Senator lounge in concourse A (where I usually spend most of my lounge time in DUS), and overall, as you’d expect from a contract lounge, nothing special. Due to the emptiness of the terminal, the lounge was also not crowded at all, and I didn’t have any problem finding a seat to settle down (which really can be a problem in the SEN lounge, particularly during the early evening hours).
For breakfast, the lounge was offering a surprisingly diverse selection of food, ranging from small croissants over several kinds of cereals, donuts and cold cuts to scrambled eggs, greek-style baked beans and Wiener sausage.
Drink-wise, they were offering a selection of soft drinks, juices, beer, wine and spirits, even though the latter were no-name products and looked quite cheap. The orange juice dispenser wasn’t working as well, and the two coffee machines were both extremely slow and the coffee was way below average.
All in all, this is a lounge that is perfectly alright. The only thing that really bothered me was the noise from the soft drink fridge, as there were obviously some loose parts around the pump which created a really loud buzzing vibration sound which could be heard throughout the lounge.