drowelf

The Centurion lounges are nice, but at some airports they are small and packed. SFO is probably the worst. I've almost never seen it not packed to the gills and often they are turning people away as they reached the fire code maximum occupancy.

MysteryTour

I let my UC membership expire last August, and I haven’t regretted it.

My wife still has a membership and on the occasions that we travel together, and I do end up in a UC, I am reminded why I dropped my membership. We frequently cannot find 2 seats together because the clubs are packed. The crowds also mean that the clubs are noisy. I seem to always be near some idiot yelling into his hands-free phone. The food is still the same cheap prepackage food service gruel.

I thought I would miss the IRROPs handling, but that can be handled just as effectively on the phone.

scubadu

Well, actually I do too, but I'd get even more value out of them if someone else was paying for it. I guess my point is that when you make statements implying UA should raise the cost even higher, it might be valuable for other posters to understand that you may have a bias in that said cost increase isn't shouldered by you.

And actually, I don't completely disagree with you that one way to reduce lounge crowding is through price increases, even though at some point, it would hit a level that I'd probably no longer be willing to pay, but just pointing out that its easier to actively wish for that path when someone else covers the bill for you.

Regards

scubadu

I don't think anyone here is debating that Centurion Lounges aren't nice, BUT over the last couple years it's becoming incredibly clear that Amex is not going to be able to scale that offer in order meet demand (i.e. crowding) nor in terms of the number of locations. So yes, the lounges are nice, but given the tiny overall, global and domestic foot print and the significant crowding issues, it's largely irrelevant.

Regards

Umm... wow... had no idea so many people were so passionate about soup?!

Regards

timfountain

I've had the UC chase card for years, but I am cancelling it as of this month. Between this price hike and the coming change in Nov to *G only access I am done. I am not in a captive hub (PDX) so I have been taking more AS and AA flights this year. There is a very poor choice of clubs in PDX, and with the current PP/AS Boardroom spat showing no signs of abating, I'm giving up on clubs as a viable concept altogether. It was fun for a decade but the race to the bottom is nearly done; there isn't much else left to eviscerate. Oh and my company does not pay for UC membership, but they do pay for food and drink (in moderation) so this further 'enhancement' doesn't affect me as far as day-to-day travel is concerned.
Finally I do wonder what will happen when the next downturns hits... Will the clubs become dead space? We'll see....

COSPILOT

I don't recall the last time I actually had any food in the UC beyond some crackers and maybe a glass of wine. The food offered is sub par unless you compare it to grade school slop. The free wine gives instant heartburn so I now avoid that. The coffee machines (if they actually work) I do enjoy, but that doesn't justify the money spent looking back. Now with the increase 2019 will likely be my last year, after 10+ years.

EWR764

Has a price hike for the Club card been announced? The Delta Amex Skymiles Reserve and AA Citi AAdvantage Executive are the comparable DL/AA cards and both come with a $450 annual fee.

Perhaps this is to push standalone club members to the credit card product?

ContinentalFan

timfountain

Good to know. I've been slowing weening myself of the single airline reliance and flying more direct flights on whatever airline makes sense. I'll pay for E+, premier access etc on an ad-hoc basis.

notquiteaff

fumje

Priority Pass gives access to all the AS lounges other than SEA's at present.

notquiteaff

fumje

OK, that's a good point. Theory and practice may differ.

mozilla

IIRC from my visits to the ORD club, there are a CAUTION-HOT text and an ISO hot surface warning sign above the French line, but you can't see it in the picture as they are obfuscated by the shadow of the pan and the pan itself. If you zoom in well, you can see excerpts from the CAUTION-HOT line.

As for why the French line, I'm guessing either maple leaf import or more likely the device has been produced for sale in both the US and Canada, and the French line was added to comply with Canada's regulations. It's a pretty common sight in the US.

threeoh

I have two lines of questions to understand this change better:

(1) When was the last price increase? What price was it before that? (What % increase is this over inflation?)

(2) I know these could only guestimates but what percentage of humans in a given lounge are (a) paid club members (b) club cc holders (c) one-time pass from Explorer card (d) paid $59 at the door (e) *G on int'l Y itin (f) foreign *G on domestic F/Y itin (g) short-haul int'l J itin (h) long-haul J/F itin at a station with no Polaris Lounge?

People complain UCs are overcrowded, to solve this UA can either restrict access or build more / bigger UCs. In most stations that already have a UC I'm guessing expanding UCs is not possible or prohibitively expensive, though they expanded LGA and have been opening some Polaris lounges which at some stations have diverted pax (though at some stations they've replaced an existing UC). They've been trying and failing to expand at EWR. So what can they do to reduce the number of people using the UC?

Access categories (b) (c) (e) (f) (g) and (h) are all tied up in multi-year contracts (and the *A rules aren't likely to change anytime soon), so if United wants to make a change unilaterally and now it's likely change (a) or (d), and remember United also has way more info than we have about which categories of access make up the bulk of the overcrowding (though we do have some anecdotes about people thinking the beer is free, who are probably not (a) or (b)).

It could be that the $59 cash entry is not significant enough to bother doing away with, and that club members are contributing the most to overcrowding, that the Club CC price will also increase shortly as soon as the Chase contract renews, and that the two free Explorer passes will also change in some way at next contract renewal (or maybe most of those expire unused and it's a sweet deal for UA).

In essence, United is saying they'd like to reduce the number of people who get in by paying [by raising the price] and leave more room for int'l pax who are *G or flying J. Rough for you if you're a domestic road warrior, but can't say I see it as a bad choice for them.

Or it could all be short-sighted and the 10%-20% of people who cancel their memberships because of the price increase will float away from UA/MP in general and cost UA a lot of ticket revenue. But for all the people who are saying "I'm cancelling my membership!" on this thread, that's what UA wants you to do. They aren't betting that demand is inelastic and they can extract more cash, they're betting that demand is elastic and they can preserve a less-crowded product for their premium pax.

That's my guess, anyway.