No more endless lines outside Centurion Lounges, Amex experiments with digital waiting list
Friday night passing through T4 at JFK, in one of the stages of my million-mile hunt [...]
Friday night passing through T4 at JFK, at one of the stops on my hunt for a million Eurobonus miles, Not being able to take advantage of my Skyteam status and flying economy with Virgin Atlantic I had no other option but to go to the Centurion Lounge.
In this article:
The airport was super clogged and I knew I would find a queue at the entrance, much to my surprise though I found a sign inviting Holders to get on the waiting list without having to stand outside in line, a significant improvement in the service, which I understand is currently experimental and not yet active in all lounges.
The operation is simple: there are two QRs, one dedicated to American Amex Platinum Holders and one for everyone else. After scanning the code, you land on the Amex website, in the appropriate section, log in with your credentials (those of the card account access to understand) you select the card with which you want to access, choose if you want to receive the notification via SMS or email and that's it.
Once registration is complete, you receive a confirmation screen summarizing the rules for using the service. which are nothing more than classic instructions:
- When you receive the link to log in you will have 10 minutes to enter the lounge, if you get past the 10 minutes you will have to register again
- You must show ticket and documents to gain access (and your flight must leave within 3 hours of entry time, unless you are in transit)
- You have to all show up at the same time, you can't book for 5 and then show up in a huddle
- In any case there will be a little bit of a line at the entrance for credential verification
At the moment there does not yet appear to be a dedicated home page for all lounges, but since this is a beta, it is possible that then this feature will be integrated directly into the American Express app. The link to get in line, or check if you need to get in line, at JFK is this (at the time of writing, then it could change of course).
We will see whether it becomes a standard or not, in any case I find it a very convenient novelty because before the alternative was to go through the whole airport and then find out that there were 60 people in front in the queue, so you can queue remotely and walk around the airport until you get the go-ahead message.
