senator lounges in Frankfurt
 

Has anyone used the Senator lounges in FRA recently? My understanding is that they are open but no food is provided :-( Are showers still available? Thanks

No showers, no food.

Was there last month, yes showers. Food had to be consumed outside.

Was there today. A level open, Z level lounge still closed. That’s said, by open that means you can speak to the desk attendant and use the restroom, get a bottle of water to go. This thread was moved from the UA forum. If you’re on UA outbound you’re out of luck. No lounge.

Was there today before OS122 - water, coffee, tea, pretzel a sandwiches cheese or turkey, everything to go.

If you're on the UA outbound (or any non-schengen), just goto the B lounge. The food options might be really poor now, but the option for a shower is still very much appreciated. This is all assuming you've got enough time ofcourse.

If one of the attendants who look at at your boarding pass sees you trying to enter the B gates with a pass for A or Z (or any pass for any other gate area than where you should be going for that matter) they will turn you away. Been there, done that. If you can get by with only using the auto scanner, you may have luck. This is not always the case though. Besides, with the restrictions in Germany lounges are nothing to enjoy right now. Nothing to attempt going out of your way for.

Since the start of the pandemic I've left FRA for EWR twice on UA and both times spent the hour leading up to the flight at the AZ50 SEN lounge.
Don't the UA flights depart form Z? At least all of mine so far did (I've only taken UA to EWR and SFO so ymmv).
The machines won't lett you enter at the A gates but I've asked the person to let me in multiple (4+) times now and never had any issues.

Since you mention the B gates, I remeber going in through those with a boarding pass for A once (when security at A was packed and B was almost empty).
Maybe this helps someone ;)

I'm not sure when your flights were but the Z50 lounge has been closed for a long time.

Or do you mean the A50 lounge?

Yeah, the automated gates will reject you trying to enter the wrong area but you can ask the attendant to let you enter. We've done that often to get to the A50 Senator lounge when departing from B Schengen gates.

Sorry, of course I mean A50.

My wife passed through FRA today, and can confirm; a50 is open and z50 is closed

Z lounges have been closed since last year when this all started, and I have had zero luck asking to be let through into another gate area. I didn't even try it last weekend when I flew FRA-EWR. I just minimize my time at the airport now. After all that's part of the point of reducing airport services. I will say that it is definitely time for the Z lounge to open, there is enough UA and *A flights departing in the morning bank to justify it. Maybe not in the afternoon onward, but in the morning at least.

Maybe this is a YMMV situation, the lounge access rules have nothing regarding which gate your flight departs from. I don't recall any automated gates or any gates at all. The attendant did not care that my gate was at Z. One time, the attendant even noted that I was leaving from Z and reminded me that they don't make announcements. I often have many hours of time between my flights so it did not matter to me if I had to walk an extra 15min, it's also nice to get a littler exercise since you know you'll be sitting for most of the day. Yes the food options are poor, but I'm willing to go a little out of my way for a hot shower.

When talking about automates gates we are referring to the turnstiles where you scan your boarding pass before going through security.

hmm, I don't recall this, maybe because I was transferring. I came out of an intl flight, walked to security, went thru, then one way was to the Z gates and the other way was to the B gates.
I don't recall if it was a person or an automated gate that looked at my BP, but I definitely recall that the choice of which gate/concourse I goto was AFTER security.
FRA has always been a bit of a maze to me, I just blindly trust the signs to get me where I need to go. Maybe if my flight arrived at a different gate, I would run into the issue you speak of.