Looks like May 22nd is the opening day per the newsroom: https://news.aa.com/news/news-detail...5/default.aspx

Me and the Old lady might fly up there for 7.5k miles and do a date night. Free food and drinks handcrafted

Interesting they built-in flex-space (~1,000 sq. ft) - not huge, but have to give credit for thinking a little ahead...

Awesome! I'll be in PHL on Saturday, 5/24, so I'll hopefully be able to check out the new Admirals' Club side!

For $150 or 15,000 miles, you can schlepp into the Flagship side.

I wish all FLs had a full service bar. I like to get a cocktail, and the self-serve bars never have the ice and/or equipment to really make one, other than mixer and spirits.

Thank goodness I can finally go through PHL now

Conspiracy theory - they could have moved the check in desk into that space and expanded each lounge a bit. The 20 seats in the diagram doesn't make a ton of difference. The design motifs are extremely similar between the 2 lounges. My guess is that if the FL becomes consistently overwhelmed, they have the option to close the AC indefinitely and convert the space into a larger, single, FL space. The 'flex space' is essentially the walkway needed to let passengers walk between the two halves without going into the reception area.

Also, a ton more pics at TPG: https://thepointsguy.com/news/americ...-philadelphia/

This is what happened with the old Envoy lounge (the US Airways Club half was permanently annexed to the Envoy lounge at one point - I don't think they moved any walls, just had the same amenities / food / beverage in both halves of the lounge). With ~20 flagship flights every evening (and by far the smallest FL in the system), my guess is the ~200 seat FL is quickly overwhelmed during the evening push.

So for FS... "for customers traveling in Business on qualifying international, transcontinental or select domestic flights....."

What are transcontinental or select domestic? Is that just LAX-PHL ?

They are just quoting the general access rules, it's not specific to PHL, and nothing has changed.

LAX-PHL certainly doesn't come with FL access, only the 3-class transcons sunch as JFK-LAX, JFK-SFO, etc. in addition to Hawii routes from DFW, ORD, and what not.

Nice that they have the a la carte options for dining. I wonder if this will be replicated elsewhere? It would be a weird and obvious inconsistency compared to the other FLs (as well as the full service bar).

Interestingly enough, they have a layout diagram here: https://news.aa.com/news/news-detail...05/#gallery1-4

It looked like less than 200 at first glance and I'm bored so I counted the seats - there are about 150 and another 3 dozen in the flex space. The seating seems to line up with the TPG pics. That's tiny. The AC is about the same size, maybe 5-10 fewer seats. They could have absolutely added a bit more seating - for example, change the 6 showers down to 3 likely would give room for another 20-25 seats.

As a comparison, the CL has ~110 per the manager a few months ago and the 3 premium AA/BA joint lounges at JFK collectively seat 1000. I can't imagine what the PHL FL will be like by the end of summer once people realize the lounge exists and the 78P starts making appearances - the AA/BA nonstops out of PHL alone must have over 500 daily J seats plus all the elites in Y/W and then the couple other groups of people that would also have access.

I'll raise your boredom one level, this is what I found for departing flights in the evening block. (All AA, the BA and EI flight not included). This is what I found based on mid-July. Note - this was a best-effort list, so if you are flying somewhere not listed - it's my mistake!

I guess it's a good thing the 789P flight to ZRH will be one of the first out. Those seats in the flex area is one more standard J cabin... Perhaps the CL won't be as crowded?

There's also new-for-this-year EDI (7:10pm) and MXP (9:20pm).

The lounge will for sure be busy from the 5-8ish pm timeframe in the summer but I don't think it will be any worse than any of the other FL's.