ariadgr_

I believe you will only be able to access the Goldair Intra Schenghen lounge, since your departure flight is a Schenghen flight.

Chr04

You can only stay if you fly to extra Schengen.
otherwise you pass passport control and enter the Schengen area.
No way to bypass

palcsaky

No, you won’t be allowed in the non-schenghen departure area with a schenghen boarding pass. There is a NS/NS transit security and they inspect your BP before letting you in. You will be directed to passport control and towards B gates for you Schenghen flight.

Phoenixtinct

Others have responded already but here's another piece of information - even if you somehow manage to get airside in the extra Schengen area - once you reach the lounge and give them the boarding pass(es), you'll be redirected to the intra Schengen lounges. The intra Schengen lounge is not something special, so you won't miss much. In the intra Schengen area, you don't have to necessarily go to the Goldair lounge - I personally find it a better option than Aegean but the best option - again, in my opinion - is the Lufthansa lounge. That is by far my 1st choice. It's not that spacious but the food selection is far superior than anything offered at Aegean and the Goldair lounges.

nikolask

Thank you, appreciate the feedback. Will try our luck with the LH lounge then and hope that we won't be denied access due to capacity issues.

ariadgr_

You can also go to Lufthansa to grab a bite, and then go to Goldair to sit

vectrox

I find your post very interessting. In both SKG and ATH-schengen Aegean installed these long blue or beige slightly bending sofa-bench thinks. I've always assumed those were for groups travelling together, because I would never like to sit in such an open spot when travelling alone.

But reading your comment those bench thinks are obviously just a waste of space.

In addition: I would not diskripe the "new" lounge as worse than the old one, but I totaly agree that it's really underwhelming. I mean it was pretty crowded even totaly of season last Winter.

giorginho

I based my review on both our own visits there, one of which was in the early afternoon (between like 14:15 and 15:15) and the other early in the morning (between 6:40 and 7:20 a.m.), both in high (summer) season, but under the new (strickter) entry rules.

If you mean the white "benches" shown here, there's no way to get them, constantly occupied (by not even nearly as many people as they can take up, still, where should a family of 4 find a spot, if even 1 person per little round table is already sitting?)!

The benches all the way at the back of the lounge would actually have single open spots here and there, but, well, you certainly can't put 2-year-olds on those things! They'll fall right off (even worse when it comes to those tall "bar" tables and the stools they have there). But yeah, all of the aforementioned spots were mostly already taken up by solo travelers, usually sitting exactly 1 person's width apart from each other, so again, no option to put 4 people together anyway (I'm sure they'd prefer the "single's tables" too, but they're almost constantly occupied, so solo travelers have to use those benches too).
All those brown armchairs were also occupied (or at best there would be one seat available) and the tables with the 3 chairs in the backround of the picture above usually had one single person occupying them!
Honestly: If I was to be traveling solo I'd certainly ask those people solo-occupying a table to sit on the same table, I don't see what's wrong with that. Never done it before because I didn't have to, but with the situation being as it is, you simply can't take up space for 3 people in the seating/resting area all by yourself!

The dark blue armchairs on the right were also just as occupied as the brown ones and you could only find a free table in the dining area on the left here (and behind, which isn't shown here), but, like I said, not a single table there made for a party of 4!
Looking at this picture again, does anyone know where all the drinks went? Those cupboards under the buffet had basically only what was available up top, which was... water and 1-2 juices!? Well I didn't open them all, did I perhaps miss something?? It's such a shame, the refrigerators in the old lounge had glass doors, you could see everything before opening the doors. Now I never say a single person open these! Everyone just took whatever drinks were up on the buffet.

This is exactly why the previous layout of the lounge was better in my opinion, at the same spot where these little dining tables are now used to be armchairs, but many of them, stacked in rows back-to-back (similar to the blue armchairs here, but ...just more of them). Aegean could have used the floor-to-ceiling glass walls to install a somewhat narrow "bar"-like dining table for solos to simply sit next to each other and gaze outside, thus saving space behine them for larger tables and more chairs per table.
This iteration of the lounge basically "invites" solo travelers to take up between 2x and 3x as much space as they actually need, blocking out ("lounge-blocking" , haha credit me for this new term!) even pairs of travelers, let alone larger groups! At least half the space / seating capacity in the dining area stays unused now (either because people can't use them or because they don't want to impede).
Compare that to, for example, the couple of huge oval tables that Goldair is sporting! You can have 2 or even 3 solo travelers sitting there and there's still plenty of space and plenty of seats (or simply the "bench") to (comfortably and child-friendly) seat a group of 4 people (and then some)! I mean imagine that! People would always consider the Goldair lounge as a "downgrade" and here I am reporting it to be at least more practical and more suitable to my current needs than the newly refurbished Aegean lounge!

Anyway, I didn't say it's generally worse than before (though I pointed out what it improved on and where it got worse), I said it's (definitely, far) worse for (more hostile to) families with young kids!

Give me a couple of weeks and I'll be there again, let's see how it fares in October...

jchock1

The goldair lounge has really good food and a decent wine selection. My third visit in as many months. Today there was a nice quinoa salad, chicken and rice, and green beans with orange.

I was denied entry with my guest at the a3 lounge as a *g and as a United club member.

There wasn't a seat available today at 1pm in the goldair lounge, but after a few minutes was able to find one.

The main irksome thing is the fact that every lounge can evidently come up with their own rules which don't align with star alliance rules. The whole point is supposed to be consistency.

ariadgr_

The breakfast food offerings are mostly inedible.
I suppose you are referring to lunch or dinner?
What were the "really good" offerings ?

jerry_greece

So on Tuesday around 2pm, LH lounge had a queue to enter and A3 lounge was close to capacity as well. Many pax complained that also the Goldair lounge they were sent is full. It seems that the situation is not getting any better...

KLouis

It will certainly not become better very soon: according to press reports, a high percentage of the summer tourism-oriented hotels will push their (season) closing dates into late November.

I found some numbers for ATH in yesterday's paper. Increase in the number of passengers for the first 8 months +8%, for the whole of 2023 till two days ago, an amazing 11%. In the first 8 months, domestic passengers were up 10% and international ones up 7%. All increases are compared to the corresponding data of 2019 (pre-COVID), the record year for airline passengers and overall tourists in Greece.

Ryzon9

For anyone else reading this thread, I am *g (AC 75k) and wasn’t allowed to bring a guest into the Aegean lounge. They gave a voucher for the goldair lounge next door which was packed. LH lounge let us in (next flight is Aegean so one comment above where access is limited based on next flight wasn't enforced).

KLouis

Did you or your guest find a free seat in the LH lounge?

Ryzon9

At first, yes. My wife likes to see what every lounge we have access to looks like so we left. Then tried to go back and there were no seats lol