"Last year, Priority Pass, a membership network of mostly low- and mid-tier lounges, saw a thirty-one-per-cent increase in visits. By 2023, amid the post-pandemic travel boom, John F. Kennedy Airport had increased its lounge space in Terminal 4 alone to some seventy thousand square feet-about the size of Bill Gates's mansion, Xanadu 2.0. Since then, the terminal has added another Xanadu's worth. There are more than thirty-five hundred airport lounges in the world."
"In 2016, at Changi Airport, in Singapore, a Malaysian businessman named Raejali Buntut missed a flight to Kuala Lumpur. He'd dozed off in the Plaza Premium Lounge. Instead of rebooking, he went to more lounges, hopping from one to the next, a total of thirty-one times. He didn't leave the airport for eighteen days. He got into the lounges with a Priority Pass-a perk of his Citi credit card-and forged flight tickets."
Airport lounges vary widely in amenities and admission policies, ranging from basic concessions to luxury services such as pedicures, personal butlers, and outdoor pools. Admission controls create stratified spaces that separate most travelers from a privileged subset. Membership networks like Priority Pass have driven growing lounge usage and recorded significant increases in visits. Major airports have expanded lounge square footage substantially, with Terminal 4 at JFK adding tens of thousands of square feet. Lounges exist in unexpected places, including small airports and resort hubs. Some travelers pursue lounge access obsessively, using memberships and forged documents, occasionally resulting in legal consequences.
Read at The New Yorker
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