Right, but compared to AA who closed their AAdmirals Club in HNL, you have to give NZ credit for at all operating a lounge at RAR.

For a fair comparison we ought to put the lounges in a relevant context when judging them. Comparing the NZ RAR lounge (in a remote location, mainly leisure travellers, served less than daily) with, for example, LH's lounges at FRA (their main hub, lots of biz travellerrs, ample flights) I am more impressed with NZ @ RAR than with LH @ FRA.

Lounges at HND,Tokyo.
always crowded, share table with someone.
Smokeful air.

LH/ANA lounge at LAX

My votes:

Lounges at 'home' airport, since they are typically nicer than lounges in other places - bad are
* LH Sen in FRA (almost allways overcrowded, very few food items, bad air)
* China Western in Xian
* Lan Chile in SCL for domestic (there was none)


Lounges at other airports
* LH Sen in BKK (even the people at check in recommend to use the Thai lounge)
* LH in LAX (Ana Lounge for F, Food court for C)
* BA in Windhoek
* TG in TPE
* UA in TPE
* KLM (NW) in LAX (even worse than ANA - and i thought this would not be possible)

Just a few months ago I visited the Bradley International lounge options.

LH had a shared "contract" lounge with someone. Not very nice.

But ANA had a very nice dedicated Business Lounge, and a separate dedicated International First Class Lounge.

Both were very nice and had great service and "spreads."

IMHO.

I think the RAR lounge is great, although on the days I've been there it's always been pretty empty which probably makes all the difference. There's a good selection of drinks, nice snacks and sandwiches and, as paullust said, you can't beat sitting out in the garden. I'm sure you'll have a good time, enjoy the Cook Islands http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Cheers, Zac

LAX:

On my visit the LH lounge was the one shared with ANA-F. It was very small and they only offered a (limited) selection of drinks. It's up one level by elevator near the security checkpoint on the right side of the terminal.

We left after minutes and as there is no offer of restaurants airside we got back out to visit a restaurant.

[This message has been edited by ralfkrippner (edited 10-01-2002).]

I can think of a lot of bad lounges but I was suprised to see UA's NY LaGuardia Red Carpet Club listed. Actually, I think that, as far as RCCs go (which isn't saying much), it's one of the nicest American ones. It's got a great view of the airport, decent food selections (again, compared to other RCCs) and hasn't been at all crowded when I have been there.

IMHO, I can think of about 20 RCCs that are worse than LaGuardia's.

But individual experiences differ.

My worst is Nice, which is shared by everybody(?)

It shows evidence of hard use....

[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Unterwegs:
I thought this was hilariously bad.


The lounge where not even the lounge staff have computers http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Regards,
Alex

The LH lounge in Bombay. No windows, dirty, smelly, with staff telling people that they are not allowed to sleep (even in a chair!) Just what you need at 2AM.

Another disappointing on:
I am right now sitting in the F section of the JAL Lounge at KIX (Osaka).

No food except peanuts and cookies.
Far too warm and humid (more than 30 C inside the area with the notebook computer - japanese keyboard - i figured out how to generate different characters:‚Ó‚¥‚¦

No diet soft drinks (only very small selection), very few newspapers. Not really the worst in the world, but after all the other nice lounges a big disappointment.

Added: A few minutes after my post somebody put food in the longe: little packages of processed cheese - but no crackers and nothing else.



[This message has been edited by Unterwegs (edited 10-09-2002).]

Got to say the KLM lounge in TPE is close to bad, but its just not quite good enough to be bad as it is down right awful. However, those dragons that LH employ across Europe take some beating. The best one was the other week at Stuttgart and my colleauge was really hungry. As there was not much to choose, it did not takle long for holes to appear in what was on offer. The miserable front desk person went ape**** at him and could not understand why he wanted more than a drink and some nuts.

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KLM RW, SA gold, etc etc

transborder MLL at YYC. Ugh.