Lounge Pass Tips and Tricks
 

Hi,

I'm not sure if this has been posted already, but I haven't been able to find anything on how to get Lounge Passes for low amounts of money! Maybe this can be a new thread

I know of a trick if you're in the UK to get 6 airport angel visits for as little as, others might know of more!

If you are a barklay's bank customer, you can add on a travel pack for around £15 a month! It gives you full travel insurance and 6 'airport angel' visits. I had mine for 3 months for an extended vacation, cancelled it after that when I didn't need it, but got to keep the lounge visits!

If you have some other tips, please post them here!

Get *G on a foreign carrier and you'll have lounge access any time you fly Star Alliance, even domestically in the US.

Amex Platinum will get you into DL Sky Clubs and Priority Pass lounges, although the annual fee is $450.

:confused::confused:
I think OP was asking about how to do this without spending a lot of money ...

*G is pretty cheap on certain airlines. I knocked out A3 *G on a single TPAC round trip.

Amex Platinum can be well worth the annual fee. In addition to the lounge acces, global Entry waiver is $100 saved if you don't have it, plus you get $200 in airline cost reimbursements.

Honestly, if you're not flying enough to get easy *G status from airlines like A3/TK or take advantage of the Amex benefits, you'd probably be better off just buying day passes for the few times you need it or getting an airline credit card that will give you a couple of passes. Or you could post in one of the Lounge meet-up threads and hope another FTer is transiting through at the same time and is nice enough to guest you in.

OP mentioned 15 GBP / Month. 180 GBP / year is not cheap.

It is if you only pay for a couple of months then cancel like the OP did.

True. But get a good card like the United card and you get unlimited lounge access instead of just 6.

All of the US legacies have a CC that includes lounge access. In that $450-500 range of course, but if you hit it with a good sign-up bonus I suppose you can justify it for a year or two. We picked up Citi AA cards last year with 100k bonus per card. I don't use the club quite enough to justify it every single year, but I probably will have made 12-15 total lounge visits before the annual fee comes up again and I cancel.

I also have A3 Gold...kind of on the fence if I'm going to renew it. Aegean recently made their renewal process *slightly* tougher (still not that hard), but it means I have to commit more earned miles to the A3 account, which I hadn't really planned on.

In some parts of the world, the freebie lounges that come with credit cards and other clubs aren't the best lounges. I had one of those generic lounge passes...got it for free one year with a few complimentary visits...and it was always a very basic lounge - not even up to the standard of a typical U.S. AAdmiral's or United Club. If your 180 quid just gets you into those general lounges (as opposed to the lounge of the alliance you actually fly), it's probably not worth it.

American Express publishing, has an Executive Skyguide Club; the annual fee I think is $49.95--but promos for $19.95 (or less) exist.
You get reimbursed once per month, for each airline day pass you buy [You have to submit your receipt; later you receive a check].
PS: Health clubs (once per month) are also part of the club.

I don't see why everyone is posting about things that happen in the USA when the OP is from Brisbane and the only thing we know is that he has travelled to the UK. Also, clearly he cannot get a US credit card. Also, £45 is not a bad deal for 6 passes, and is MUCH less than travelling TPAC to get *G, when *G only gains access to Star Alliance lounges when flying Star Alliance.

Surely the six passes are only valid for certain lounges, maybe far fewer than the *Gold lounges around the world.

I would never recommend a mileage run solely for the purpose of getting *G. That's mainly a strategy if you're already flying a lot of Star and are doing so with an airline and fare bucket that would qualify you for A3 Gold with comparative ease. It's a trade-off: you're parking RDM's in a place where you can only get them out via a telephone redemption in exchange for easy lounge access and potentially other minor perks on a *A airline.

Because partner status is never as good as native status, this strategy is most useful to someone who flies 20k-40k/yr on Star. If you're already north of 50k/yr, you're probably better off with native status. If you fly Oneworld (as may be the case with the aforementioned Aussie in the UK), it's no good at all...because Star Gold gets lounge access only in conjunction with an actual Star Alliance flight.

GBP 45 for 6 visits is *probably* a good deal. But if the lounge you're admitted to is one of the unaffiliated lounges staffed by airport contractors, it's worth a lot less than being in the lounge of the airline you're getting ready to fly. I've been in a few of those where I was appreciative of the quiet seat and free coffee, but I was glad I didn't pay for access.

Each time my wife and I go on vacation I try to book around the end of the month and then get United Club or Delta SC passes on eBay. When its the end of the month there are always ones that are expiring that people are trying to get rid of. Usually I pay around $15 per pass but the last time I got 3 United Club passes for a total of $12! That sure made a 3 hour layover at DEN much better! If you use the clubs frequently then a CC is probably better, but if you only take 3-4 leisure trips a year then this might work for you.

Native status on UA won't get you lounge access domestically unless you also pony up for the United Club membership. *A seems to be the only alliance that does this since OW and ST require an international flight for lounge access regardless of the FFP (although in my experience, a lot of foreign contract lounges don't seem to care).

True, but partner status won't get you upgrades or even reliable access to Economy Plus.

The state of domestic U.S. clubs is such that I wouldn't exactly miss them if I had no access: I'd much rather have upgrades, reliable E+, etc. Some might also find value in the accompanying Marriott status. That is, if I flew enough to hit United Gold or higher.

But for me, one who doesn't do a lot of United anymore, A3 Gold is better than no status or barely making United Silver status. Silver would put me into a theoretical upgrade queue but I doubt it would yield any highly-desirable upgrades.