hardiwv

JL Sakura lounge in AMS is quite decent and very conveniently located.

Rgs,

Spiff

If you like dim sum, then you'll be able to make a light meal of it + some snacks at the LHR CX lounge in T3.

serfty

As posted in this and other threads, you will need to look to Oct '09 at the earliest for the T3 move. Other than that, go via NRT or HKG from T5.

You have a decision to make - balancing the inflight product of the QF A388 against the current relatively poor lounge situation in T4.

AusEuroFlyer

Thanks Spiff. Not hugely into dim sum unless they're very good ones (then I love them), although I don't mind them. I guess it might well be better than the 'T4 zoo' as I sometimes call the T4 lounge. I found the food to at T4 zoo to be rather poor, so I guess I'm not missing much there anyway

Thank you for your suggestion, although getting to AMS is either PITA or very expensive from here, so I think I'd be sticking to LHR. AMS one sounds better than the JAL uses as their contract lounge at CDG though (apparently rather poor).

Kiwi Flyer

I recently sampled the OW F lounges at LHR T3 (see report).

In my opinion CX > AA >>>> JL (I didn't find the AA lounge that bad - sure it is no LH FCT but better than most AA lounges).

Note the opening hours vary between the lounges (CX and JL weren't open when I arrived at LHR so I went to AA initially instead).

AusEuroFlyer

Thanks Kiwi Flyer. Sounds like CX is the one then.

number_6

Agreed. But it is the worst FL that AA has (and they only have a few); yet LHR is their busiest F airport (maybe busiest in J too, with 20 777 flights per day). Upgrading to the level of the ORD FL would be nice. Given that it hasn't changed in the past 5 years, it clearly won't change soon. The last I heard is that BA/QF will pay for a new lounge at T3, and the existing AA and CX lounges remain. JL lounge becomes the OW poor airline lounge (IB, MA, AY and whatever other airlines move from T1 to T4). The common OW lounge at LAX has been enough of a disaster to discourage repeating that kind of co-operation at LHR.

The food in the CX lounge is substantially the same as BA (with addition of a couple of chinese dishes including a chef making noodles to order if you ask nicely). Nothing like CX in TPE or even in NRT.

Kiwi Flyer

Well the sandwiches in CX lounge were identical to the sandwiches in the AA lounge. The noodles to order & dim sum were great. The snacks in CX lounge were I thought different to BA's snacks (at least comparing F lounge to F lounge) - I visited BA T5 F (not CCR) also in the same trip.

The other lounge used by OW at LHR T3 is Servisair (contract lounge for RJ). I ran out of time to check it out, but given my other experiences of Servisair lounges I'm sure it was not as good as the others.

Spiff

I went through NRT two months ago and was disappointed greatly by the new CX lounge. Very little food to speak of, lousy booze, small and cramped facilities.

Happily, the JL F lounge at NRT is fantastic and the AA lounge is decent. I was very surprised that CX was at the bottom by quite a wide margin at NRT.

sxc

CX is catering for a short haul at NRT (well less than 5hr flight) so they don't need to try as hard I guess.

sxc

No need to ask nicely for noodles in the LHR CX F lounge. They are listed on a sign. And I don't think they are done by a chef - they are basically 3-minute noodles in a bowl with some dumplings added. I doubt much effort is made apart from adding boiling water.

And the CX F LHR lounge food is way inferior to BA T5 F and even J lounge. Not comparable at all.

Globaliser

I'm increasingly convinced that those who are finding the T4 lounge situation poor are those who are used to having an F lounge to use.

If you were used to using the J lounges in T4, the current T4 Gate 1 lounge conditions are IMHO if anything better than they were before T5 opened - particularly in that the lounge is less crowded than it was pre-March 2008.

If you arrive at T4 from Australia, the Qantas website suggests that the only passengers who would have been eligible to use the T4 Arrivals Lounge before it closed but who can't now use the T5 Arrivals Lounge (to which BA is operating a shuttle transfer) are those who are booked on the QF code on QF metal.

AusEuroFlyer

I am indeed one of those people you describe. I'm used to having an F lounge to use at T4. It used to get bad enough even at Flounge at times - rather crowded ('having to share a coffee table with a stranger or else one would not be able to sit down' level of crowdedness) until it was later in the evening and most short haul BA flights had departed. At least, it was not as bad as it gets in the current T4 lounge though.

It also doesn't help that T4 lounge are far less nice than even the normal T5B Galleries, so the 'gap in niceness' seems huge.

Also I'm one of those passengers that miss out on the arrivals lounge too, whereas I used to have that. Arrivals Lounge issue isn't so bad any more for me personally because I now either have a hotel to go to or a connecting flight on BA from T5 (thus just going to the T5 F lounge).

But it can be a bit annoying having things 'taken away' or 'degraded' even if you aren't really fussed about the 'thing' itself.

number_6

You are mostly right. I worded it poorly when I said CX lounge food is substantially the same; what I meant is that the dishes that CX does offer are substantially the same -- but there are lots of better dishes that BA T5 lounges do offer (and CX doesn't have even on the F side). It is self-evident that BA would have better lounge food (it is there flagship lounge after all!). In that context the surprise is that BA did not go with Peninsula quality catering as CX did in HKG. Also what I meant about asking the chef nicely is that they have some non-instant noodles as well (maybe a limited supply or reserved for chinese). As a non-chinese I've managed to get them by asking nicely and these are not the noodles on the menu.

hardiwv

I will stick to the inflight product, no doubt.

Rgs,