American Express has announced they will be opening a new Centurion Lounge at London Heathrow Airport. The lounge will open sometime in 2019 and will be located in Terminal 3. Key pieces of information:
- Lounge will be 7,000 square feet
- Will contain showers, private work states and UK inspired drinks & cuisine
It’ll be interesting to see how a lounge with 7,000 square feet will cope with the number of visitors Heathrow receives. How crowded the lounge is will largely depend on what access is like for UK-based cardholders. Currently American Express only operates one true Centurion lounge internationally in Hong Kong, that lounge is over 8,000 square feet. The now confirmed lounge at Charlotte Douglas International Airport CLT will be 13,000 square feet for comparison.
Hong Kong is NOT their best lounge. Not excited about this. UK-inspired food? The base food in the UK comes from the influences of former colonies.
Cool. I’ll be there December 20th, 22nd, and January 3rd…just in time to miss it.
Does anybody know if somebody has two different Platinum cards, does that enable you to bring more than 2 guests into the Centurion lounges? I am considering opening a business Platinum card (one Schwab, one business platinum) and I would like the ability to bring 3 guests into the lounge.
I assume you can always bring in two guests on wit one card, then walk out from the lounge alone and bring in one guest with a different Amex Platinum. (Never tried it myself, though.)
The folks doing the access aren’t machines, and they surely remember if they’ve already checked you in or not. I doubt they’d not notice that you’re bringing a total of 3 people that way.
“Guest access is per Card Member, not per Card.”
https://thecenturionlounge.com/info/access
under “what is the guest policy?”
Interesting that they’ve opted to take on some really solid OW lounge choices in Terminal 3. But I guess there is going to be a decent subset of passengers who can’t access those lounges (not OW Sapphire/Emerald and not flying in a premium cabin) who have Amex Platinums?
I guess this is why all the annual fees are going up with all these new lounges….lol. I wish CLT lounge would be open by Jan and JFK/LHR in Feb. I guess I will have plan more trips to check them out.
Hopefully it will be in April, we have enough of a layover to try to give it a shot otherwise we will have to wait till next fall
I found the HKG Centurion lounge to be terrible (luckily was flying CX biz so there were lots of options) so if this is smaller than that, I’d avoid.
I found the HKG very nice. To each their own.
HKG was pretty solid as far as Centurion lounges go, but relative to the F/J Cathay lounges coming up short. Amex might be better than nearly all domestic lounges, but going internationally they’re playing with the big boys.