Originally Posted by
aok336423
I just hope these changes don't work out for Delta. The one thing I’m not really considering is how Amex may be pushing to reduce costs/payouts to Delta for access. I don’t think any outsiders really know the terms of those contracts, but Amex could be the main driver if they’ve set themselves up with really unfavorable contracts – but I wonder what the difference is between the Chase and Citi contracts for UA and AA, since they aren’t having these problems.
One immediately apparent difference is that UA's and AA's lounge cards confer a Club membership, while the Reserve makes it clear that it's not a membership (the slightly different access rules, for instance). So it's a reasonable inference that UA and AA effectively sell lounge memberships at a discount to Chase/Citi (which partly explains why those cards have little benefit for holding beyond club access, though recent AA changes are interesting in this light).