One of the expected perks of flying business class on an airline is access to the lounge. Airlines operate their own lounges at some airports while at other places they contract out the access.

These contract lounges are sometimes operated by other airlines while at smaller outstations it is a lounge operated by the airport. All of this makes perfect sense as you would not want your own lounge and the associated costs if you had just one flight daily.

Contract Or No Contract?

Sometimes airlines are just cheap which meant that when I flew from Ibiza to Dublin on British Airways, there was no lounge access provided. This is despite the fact there were several flights per day by British Airways from a number of different cities.

The reason for this is that the airline chose not to contract the lounge at Ibiza Airport. Other oneworld carriers such as S7 Airlines and Iberia do use the lounge there, but BA chose not to. There are a variety of places where BA don’t pay such as Krakow in Poland among others.

Why Don’t They Pay?

Presumably the contract price is too high or the economics of the route are marginal to the point that lounge access for business class passengers would make the route lose money. There can’t be any other excuse for not having this benefit everywhere. If there is, please let me know!


Funnily enough the marketing of the business class products (Club World and Club Europe) on the BA web site conveniently forgets to mention that you may not actually get lounge access at some ports. It all points to the benefits and how great it all is and nothing more.

Overall Thoughts

Frequent flyers who experience the no lounge problem usually aren’t very happy about it. I managed to go through Ibiza Airport during a cleaners strike, so sitting in the terminal among the rubbish was particularly festive and fun.

Lounge employees at these outstations bluntly tell passengers, “British Airways don’t pay for you to access the lounge here” which certainly doesn’t do much for a person’s impression of the airline.

What say you? Is this a storm in a tea cup or a valid point? Thank you for reading and please leave your comments or questions below.

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Featured image by Aero Icarus via Wikimedia Commons.