Given that the original plan for the Centurion lounges was to be free for Centurion Cardmembers and paid entry for Platinums, it seems it will soon be one of two choices for Amex:
1. Increase the size of the lounges to handle what seems like an ever more typical over-crowding scenario.
OR
2. Revert back to the original plan of charging Platinums for daily visits.

It has begun. Clubs will be hit or miss until August/September

This is going to be an issue with all airline clubs

I agree, it�s already begun. Airlines juice revenue by selling miles and lounge memberships to banks, but lose control of capacity/inventory management, thereby reducing quality. It will take a significant recession that actually affects the upper middle class to shake things up and get people to offload these cards.

I�m just shocked at the number of people in lounges (whether airline or AMEX) who appear to be newbies to the whole premium travel/lounge experience.

Regarding the Centurion lounge, as a card holder since 2017 (still fairly new I know), the crowding and degradation of the lounge experience circa 2021 to now makes me value the lounge component of the card at essentially 0. Haven�t been to a Centurion lounge since last June and I fly in average 2-3x per week with about 1-2 trips on average thru major hubs (DFW,CLT,LAX,LGA,etc.) that have them.

Except airline lounge quality has actually improved due to competition from credit card owned or contracted lounges.

It's not just the upper middle class that have premium cards. Plenty of people are on the points wagon due to increased popularity and awareness through blogs and word of mouth. Many go out of their way for free food and drinks...

I think this has a lot to do with the current lounge situation. A frequent traveler isn't going to wait 45 minutes in a line to get into the lounge, but someone that justified paying the $695 annual fee for an Amex Platinum based on lounge access for the two airplane trips they take a year will.

Thankfully lounges are for everyone who qualify not just those that travel frequently because they took a job where they need to travel. Opposed to those who do not travel for their job but do appreciate the finer things in life which may be enjoying a lounge at the airport a few times a year. Lounges are certainly A LOT more crowded and that stinks but both types of travelers have to deal with it, some more frequently than others. It seems there�s a lot of negativity towards the non-business traveler with a good amount of entitlement going on.

So then there has to be enough of those cardholders that only fly twice a year to create the 45 minute line into the lounge as well as the crowding inside. Or IMO there are still plenty of frequent travelers going in alongside the occasional ones and together creates the current situation.

Just curious if you are including Centurion Lounges and Delta Sky Clubs in your analysis or just Centurion Clubs?
For those that live near a Delta hub (like myself) that Platinum card can provide a little more value that others may not get. Delta Clubs can be a zoo too, but Minneapolis doesn't offer a lot of options, except for the Sky Club and Escape Lounge.

Having access to the Sky Club once or twice per year is nice, but I agree, at $25 per visit, there isn't much difference between $50 and $0.00 when evaluating whether to keep the Platinum.

Exactly. Couple behind me on yday flights smashed like 6-7 drinks each on a 1.5 hours flight in UA F. People love "free" foods and drinks even though it's carb-laden snacks and ...... booze that would bring them closer to having heart attacks.

It's pretty amazing, in a bad way, how much it's degraded in such a short time. I mean in 2019 and earlier, there were no waits or lines to get in, the food was decent quality. Now...my home lounge is still pretty good but I typically travel off peak hours. My experience in connection and other lounges, DFW is usually a mess, new LGA was good the one time I could actually get in. JFK has been mediocre since day 1. DEN is frequently a lines down the escalator situation.

The fact of the matter is that too many people have access, and the fault lies completely at Amex because they'll approve anybody with a pulse, a SSN and a willingness to pay the annual fee.

This is a pretty simplistic view of what has become a very difficult problem. Clearly, Amex (and now the other lounges) have been trying to solve this for years without much success.

"The fact of the matter" (as you put it) is not just that Amex will "approve anybody with a pulse." Amex is in the business of extending credit; that is literally what a credit card company does. They certainly have the data to understand whether they are extending credit to people that have the ability to pay that credit back or not. And if delinquency rates were out of bounds they would reign that back in.

The problem is not "who" is approved, but rather the value proposition of the card. At this point many who hold this card, particulatly those with the Schwab version, are almost being paid by Amex to carry the card. So, many here like to complain about lounge crowding while crowing that they are paying ~$700 per year for the card and they should not have to endure crowded lounges. But the reality is that literally nobody is paying $700 per year, the effective annual fee is much, much lower.

Simple example for Schwab cardholder:

• $695 annual fee
• -$200 customer appreciation rebate (from Schwab)
• -$200 airline credit
• -$240 digital entertainment credit
• -$200 FHR hotel credit
• -$150 Walmart+ credit
• -$200 Uber Cash
• ... etc, I'll stop here

Effective annual fee: -$495

I mean is there really any wonder why the lounges would be crowded? Even assuming that someone doesn't take advantage of all those credits or they don't value them at full face value (and there are even more credits I didn't even list, e.g. Saks, etc.) the card unquestionably offers pretty compelling value for the annual fee. Is there really any surprise the card is successful and lounges are jammed?

When people here say things like "they approve anyone with a pulse" that is usually code for "they should make it harder for other people to get the card, but not harder for me to get the card." Unfortunately that doesn't address the root cause.

At this point, the lounge crowding situation has changed (and effectively locked in) to a new norm and the reality is that the credit card companies (Amex/Chase/Capital One) have somewhat changed their business models semi-permanently and they probably aren't going back to the old ways. They need a stream of people signing up for the card every year to keep the revenue flowing.

Basic economics tells us that if you have constrained (and in the case of physical lounges, somewhat fixed) supply then the only way to change things is on the demand side. That means increasing (and probably drastically) that effective annual fee and ensuring the card is more expensive to hold. For example, in the early days of when I got this card it provided lounge access to most of the airline lounges (AA/UA/CO, etc) and frankly the lounges weren't really crowded at all. But I was also paying $450 for the card and there really weren't any "coupons" to speak of. My out of pocket for the card was pretty much the full fee. Thus, less people were willing to spring for the card.

I've often advocated in these forums that I'd love to see the real, effective annual fee for this card go up to an actual, say, $750 or even $1000 per year and actually provide a genuine, premium experience. And yes, that is self serving as well, because its a price point I could afford (and would be willing) to pay, if the experience was genuinely a premium one. That said, my dream solution, at this point, will simply never happen. The credit card companies chose "volume" as their strategy, so they have to keep getting people to sign up for cards.

Anyway, that was a rather long winded way of saying the problem is not so much about "who" Amex will approve, I think it's very unlikely that many of the folks they are approving for the Platinum card are in fact defaulting on their debt (and remember, their core business is extending credit and ensuring that its paid back). The bottom line is simply that the cards economics are quite attractive to a lot of people and unless that changes this problem will effectively never get better. It's like building highways; by the time they build and open new lounges there will be even more people holding the card and the new lounge will be instantly full.

Regards

So you are arguing for an effective increase of ~ $1500 in annual fee. That will never happen.

We may perceive a problem with crowding because we see lines when we need to get in, but the reality is that many lounges are probably not at capacity for a significant amount of time. I've actually never had to wait in a line in the last two years for the lounges and time of the day I needed to access. I'm also not sure if an oasis of calm is what Amex is trying to or realistic to create. For most businesses (and I'm not sure Amex is any different), being as close to capacity and for as much of the time as possible is the goal.

Ultimately, Amex Platinum is a now mass-market product, just like Chase Sapphire Reserve or Capital One Venture X. The luxury of space and privacy (that it once was when it was more niche) is simply not compatible with the mass appeal. Amex is unlikely to make any moves that could jeopardize its competitiveness against Chase, etc.

I quite literally said, and I quote, "That said, my dream solution, at this point, will simply never happen."

Was that not clear?

Again, this seems like a rather simplistic (and frankly somewhat silly argument). Airports are quite literally organized around banks of flights. Thus there are pockets of the day when there is low demand because there are only a few, random, one off flights. But at the end of the day most of us, myself included, need to access a lounge near the time our flight is actually departing and most peoples flights happen to be scheduled around the same time, because that is literally the definition of "banking." If an airport has no flights scheduled and thus the lounge is empty, because nobody is actually at the airport, does it matter that the lounge is empty?

Lucky for you. Clearly that is not what most of us are experiencing. The current version of this thread has over ~700 replies and over 128K views. Additionally, this is a new version of a previous thread that also ran for many years before being deprecated and a new one started. So I hardly think I'm the only one disappointed in the CL experience. I don't think I've actually been in a CL for 1.5 to 2 years as literally every time I've attempted to access one there has been a substantial wait or if I got in I simply turned around and walk out because people were practically sitting on the floor.

Again, I'm pretty sure I basically said a version of all of this when I wrote things like:

Regards

Amex has been very busy refreshing card products this year, so I would not be surprised to see a refreshed personal Plat in the US this year with an AF of somewhere between $795 and $995.

And expect extra coupons to go with it- I would not be surprised to see a monthly Resy credit added, like with the recent DL card refreshes.