Porto Lounge?
 

This is rare occurrence - me starting a thread to ask what lounge is available at an airport! :D

I've searched the forum, looked at the dashboard/lounge guide and searched on the oneworld website - nothing has come up regarding a lounge in Porto.

So... is there a lounge, and if so what's it like? If there's no lounge, are vouchers offered for CE/status pax?

Thanks in advance. :)

Having booked a trip to OPO in July, this is of course interesting

Here you go, as confirmed by ba_cityflyer

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/22689962-post133.html

Thanks Prospero! ^

No thank you for the much needed nudge :)

Yes there is an airport/handling agent lounge. TP use it too. I see its referenced in the Europe lounge database thread towards the end.

We flew from OPO yesterday (sadly not with BA) and can confirm the contract lounge has a British Airways logo up on the wall, along with other notables such as Angola Airlines.

For the evening there was a selection of small triangles of sandwiches containing cheese, ham and cheese, ham, turkey or tuna.

There were some tapas-style croquettes and other savoury parcels, as well as some sweets including the infamous Portuguese custard tarts. There were also large bowls full of heavily-salted cashews, peanuts and crisps.

On the drinks side of things, the beers were very cold ^ and they had Coke Zero among the soft drinks, and small bottles of both still and sparkling water.

Spirits were somewhat disappointing. "Cutty Sark" blended Scotch anyone? Three kinds of port wine were on offer, including a rather nice white port.

Boarding calls were being made, there was free wifi although that became patchy on the balcony (internal, overlooking departure shopping) part of the lounge. Toilets were out of the main lounge and across from the reception desk.

No longer partnered with BA
 

As this comes up at the top of the Google search results for "Porto Lounge BA", I think it is worth pointing out that there is no longer a lounge at Porto for BA flyers.

Found this out yesterday. They still accept people in the Iberia frequent flyer programme, but no longer BA.

It seems the BA ground staff don't know this though, as they directed us to the lounge at checkin !

Welcome to Flyertalk Pumplekin, welcome to the BA board, and thank you for joining up here and letting us hear of your experiences.


OPO is indeed known as a location without confirmed lounge access. I was allowed in, but many other FTers were not. It's also a Priority Pass and cash lounge so there are ways in (and it's a better lounge than LIS or FAO). There is a bit more detail about this, and the lounge-less locations, in the Forum's Dasboard thread for Europe lounges.

We're flying from OPO this afternoon. Does anyone know if BA offers vouchers in lieu of lounge access? If not we will just head straight to the lounge and use Priority Pass as we are on HBO. Thanks.

No, nothing. I tend to fly TAP out if Porto to get access and I've seen a couple of arguments at reception with BA passengers. To be fair to them it does seem odd that Iberia have access and BA don't.

I was in Porto last week. No lounge access, but if you go to check in, you'll get a sticker on your boarding pass for fast track security.

I can answer my own question. Admittedly we played a bit dumb. We had obviously booked the flight before BA withdrew from the lounge as it was mentioned our booking confirmation. We showed this to the lady at check-in who was confused but telephoned a colleague who confirmed that BA had withdrawn their association with the lounge. We asked about a voucher but the answer was no. We did get to use fast track security which is called something like the green route and that was very efficient. No sticker was needed which is fortunate as are on HBO using the boarding passes on our phones. We are now in the lounge, courtesy of Priority Pass waiting for our flight whose delay is getting longer as I type.

Have I understood this correctly?
 

Hi Guys,
Off to Porto tomorrow.
Is there really no lounge access to CE pax?
Have I missed something because the BA site is today saying there is access to BA pax.

cheers

There is some comment in the Dashboard's Europe lounge thread about this issue. This is new route, and typically they don't give lounge access for the first year or so, the wiki on the previous mentioned thread has a long list of such locatons. Admittedly many of BA's new routes are to locations where lounge provision is not going to happen, the airport is barely a barn at the end of a field. OPO however would have some business traffic and has been going for a while. At some point lounge access was granted at the ANA lounge, I used it at least twice, and yet more recently it appears to have been taken away. I don't know the background, but typically this happens when the lounge operator bumps the price beyond BA's limits (e.g. PFO).

Which is a long paragraph saying that lounge access seems unlikely, but it would be good to get your experience of this. You would get lounge access in LGW, albeit No. 1 Traveller.