Originally Posted by
SFTNYC
This is what happened with the old Envoy lounge (the US Airways Club half was permanently annexed to the Envoy lounge at one point - I don't think they moved any walls, just had the same amenities / food / beverage in both halves of the lounge). With ~20 flagship flights every evening (and by far the smallest FL in the system), my guess is the ~200 seat FL is quickly overwhelmed during the evening push.
Interestingly enough, they have a layout diagram here:
https://news.aa.com/news/news-detail...05/#gallery1-4
It looked like less than 200 at first glance and I'm bored so I counted the seats - there are about 150 and another 3 dozen in the flex space. The seating seems to line up with the TPG pics. That's
tiny. The AC is about the same size, maybe 5-10 fewer seats. They could have absolutely added a bit more seating - for example, change the 6 showers down to 3 likely would give room for another 20-25 seats.
As a comparison, the CL has ~110 per the manager a few months ago and the 3 premium AA/BA joint lounges at JFK collectively seat 1000. I can't imagine what the PHL FL will be like by the end of summer once people realize the lounge exists and the 78P starts making appearances - the AA/BA nonstops out of PHL alone must have over 500 daily J seats plus all the elites in Y/W and then the couple other groups of people that would also have access.