uanj

No early release for good behavior?

Should work, let us know how things go!

MSPeconomist

In principle, yes it does violate a DL rule if you buy and then cancel a smae day ticket after you use it to enter a SC early, more than three hours before the flight you actually take. You would be violating a rule about fictitious or impossible bookings. There could also be a risk (however slight) that DL might cancel the ticket you plan to use.

MSPeconomist

When DL raises membership fees, those who use SCs less frequently are more likely to drop their memberships. The same would be true of people who get expensive credit cards primarily for SC access.

There could also be an issue of "revenge" SC use: people think they're paying a big fixed fee for access, so they make a point of using lounges more frequently, for longer periods, and consume more F&B while in the lounge.

AFAIK DCA still has a separate SC section for elected officials and other VIPs. A few other airports (IIRC LAX is one and JFK would also make sense) so one could ask the same question regarding celebrity early lounge access.

DL has been advising everyone, including DMs with paid D1 tickets, to arrive four hours early at certain international airports. It would be very annoying for a D1 passenger to be denied access to an AF/KLM/VS lounge when the premium cabin passenger arrived on time and was able to get to the lounge in less than an hour for check in/baggage check, exit passport control, and airport security. In fact, I recently went from the airport door to the lounge in less than an hour when originating at AMS and CDG.

It can also be very reasonable to plan to arrive extremely early when there are strikes.

In terms of winter driving, I can recall a time when I left my hotel four hours early for what normally should be a one hour drive to the airport (on roads that I know reasonably well and that don't have major rush hour problems) and I still missed my flight from an outstation.

In addition to winter weather, road closures, construction, and detours can cause major delays. Recently I experienced an unanticipated detour for bridge repair work that caused my drive (fortunately on a raod trip so that I wasn't going to an airport) to be extended by more than an hour.

RJs board later (30 minutes for CRJ-900s and it might be even less for CRJ-200s) and wide body international flights board earlier (60 minutes for at least most routes).

Some of us can enter SCs by multiple methods. When I have a D1 ticket and an AmEx Plat charge card or DL reserve card, am I one or the undesirables? Is your answer different when I'm taking a flight in domestic FC?

IIRC Centurion cardholders are exempt from the three hour rule for AmEx Centurion lounges and they were also exempted from the no use on arrival restriction. Do DL SCs treat Centurion card access differently and allow originating passengers to enter early?

What about DL 360s? Does the three hour rule apply to them? In fact, when access upon arrival was prohibited, was this enforced for 360s?

I'm not so sure about 360s, certain VIPs, and Centurion cardholders.

WillBarrett_68

well lifetime members are explicitly exempted from 3-hour rule, but regardless, the point is that Delta is determining those exceptions, not Amex.

GUWonder

I just asked some Centurion family and friends who are primarily MSP, CHI and NYC-originating flyers to try it out with DL SkyClubs. They are pretty sure their latest visits involved checks for the 3 hour rule too, but they didn’t yet deliberately try to see what would happen 4 hours out at the originating airports’ SkyClubs. We would be surprised if DL didn’t enforce the 3 hour rule for Centurion too since Delta both charges for spouses, partners and kids and limits guests per Centurion card holder.

ostatekitty

I thought i had read if your (assuming an iPhone user) add’l cardholder added their AMEX to Apple wallet, then they would be connected. I will be able to test that out this weekend and report back. Mr. Ostatekitty has added his reserve card to wallet, but not his delta account. We’ll if he can just scan his boarding pass in the SC and go (assuming there’s not a line).

DLHubber

Apple Wallet is irrelevant for this. Some say it needs to be in your Delta Wallet, but Delta already knows who has what card(s) since they’re linked to your SkyMiles account so I’m not sure that’s actually necessary.

ijgordon

How would Delta know that my spouse has an Amex Platinum charge card as an authorized user on my account if it's not in his Delta wallet? It's not linked to his Delta account, the Membership Rewards points can only go to my SkyMiles account.

DLHubber

Good point. But my point still stands for primary users.

unitedbusiness

Couldn’t you do a same day confirmed flight change to an earlier flight, enter the Sky club, and then switch back to your original flight to skirt the 3 hour rule?

mridley2

Many of you are missing the point. If I have sky club access.... it's free to enter whether it is 60 minutes before flight or 4 hours before flight. free = free. moreover if you are paying $39 or $59 or whatever the fee is these days with AMEX... even more reason to get your moneys worth and go early!
me? i like a solid 3-4 hours in the club before my flight especially international/long flights. I can work, read, drink, eat, sleep, whatever the hell I want. for HOURS!
I paid my membership fee (AMEX Reserve) and so help me, Ed Bastian, I am going to take full advantage of that amenity that I PAID FOR.
sky club hot dog = Chicago dog. mustard. check. onion, check. bun, check. hot dog. check. what else do you need???

sydneyracquelle

You cannot enter SC 4 hours before your flight unless you cheat with a fake earlier standby, are connecting, on a same-day turn and are treated as arriving, are a lifetime SC member, or the SC is empty and the agent lets you in irrespective of the rules.

WillBarrett_68

I can do all of those things other places, there's no reason I have to go to the club to do any of them. The point of the this thread is the three hour limit, the fact that "they have hotdogs" has zero relevance because you don't have to get to the club three hours before your flight even if it happened to be the only place in the universe that had the global hot dog monopoly. It's a nonsensical point in this context.

Also your Amex Reserve does NOT give you a club membership. Read the T&C.

GUWonder

Delta excludes most of us from using the Delta lounges more than 3 hours before scheduled departure at point of origin for the trip or elsewhere that is effectively an O on the tickets. Delta doesn’t care that that most customers/partners have either paid or will pay for the lounge access, since Delta assumes it will get that business anyway even if limiting us to 3 hours of use at points of origin.

Delta wants to keep the lounges packed with Amex customers, and this 3 hour rule isn’t stopping that. …. and so we get the performance art of Delta’s “anti-crowding” lounge access measures — measure that beat around the bush on the big causes of the lounge crowding.

The travel industry is big into green-washing. Here we have Delta into “crowd-washing” — using “crowd-alleviation” measures as an opportunity to try to boost the revenues and margins of its lounge operations rather than to deal with the elephant in the room about the crowding in the lounges.

Visconti

So, you surmise absent of DL's Amex relationship, it wouldn't be necessary to impose the 3-hour rule? Interesting perspective.