Originally Posted by
tbaiyun
Visited on Aug 26th, 2 weeks from the lounge reopened.
Key changes:
- Better food options with multiple hot plate choices (Boeuf bourguignon, Chicken in Porto sauce, puree, vegetable)
- Good cold selection with greens, cheese, etc.
- A dedicated new bar that serves real champagne (Piper, 2 glasses max per pax), and other cocktails
- More showers, but towels are no longer given in a bag
- Reception now locates on the departure level, not the lounge level
- Seem to have more seats but still not enough (with social distancing)
- Newspapers: seems gone, paperless now.
Very impressed by the new YUL lounge
. AF is really doing great with their new or renovated lounges. Kudos to them for doing this in this pandemic period. They put many airlines at shame, including the sister one : KL.
tbaiyun has already provided a lot of info (which I confirm) and pictures, but I will post my own pics
, among which you will see the large and very nice Ultimate/VIP area. Initially, when we had the AF announcement for the lounge, I thought that they extended it, but in fact no : it is still the same surface but reorganized.
Although I had a very good moment in the lounge, my experience on the ground at YUL (before lounge) was far from being good. I will report this soon in the Ulti thread (hopefully tomorrow as no more time today).
As you know, this is an AF lounge but the lounge operations are subcontracted to Plaza Premium. For Ultimate members there is an AF agent in the lounge in charge of taking care of us
. This agent and the bar tender are frequently checking on you and make sure you don't need anything. Sincerely, you are treated like a king
. Those persons were super nice.
The PP staff at the reception desk downstairs apparently needs some more training (to be seen in the Ulti thread) and I was surprised to hear at the end of boarding announcement for the KL flight "thank you for choosing Plaza Premium lounge". I mentioned this to my dedicated AF agent and she was aware and said they are not allowed to say this and she reminded the person after the announcement. Another anecdote with the PP lounge staff which left me speechless : I was alone in the reserved space. I am used to see "invaders" in lounge Ulti reserved space but this time it was a special visitor : about 30 min before my boarding time, a guy came in the reserved space with a plate of lounge food and started to eat in one of the sofa. The guy was wearing a kind of uniform and I realized he was working in the lounge kitchen. OK...this guy is having a break and has decided to eat the lounge food and comes quietly in the passenger area of the lounge to eat. I could not believe this... 5 min later, my dedicated AF agent came back to see me and saw the guy and I immediately saw on her face the typical reaction of "what the hell is he doing here eating lounge food". She acted in a very professional way to kick the guy out and she came to apologize saying this should have never happened.
Another important information to share with you : the night service begins only in November.
Finally, she told me that all AF flights to YUL are super packed (and that corresponds to my experience for my round trip). At the moment, AF operates 2 daily flights, one in a B772 and one in a B77W COI config. And there is the KL/AMS flight on top. Good to see traffic quickly recovering once the borders reopen
The Ultimate / VIP reserved area:
And still the very nice views on the apron:
