Bangkok Airport’s Lounge Rules Are Getting Ridiculous

Rules for accessing lounges at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK) are continuing to get more unreasonable and arbitrary (thanks to David for flagging this). It seems to be the airport authority, Airports of Thailand (AOT), that’s behind this…

Bangkok Airport trying to stop lounge hopping

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how several airline-run lounges at Bangkok Airport left Priority Pass, all at once. Historically, Bangkok has been one of the world’s best airports when it comes to Priority Pass lounges, but that suddenly changed.

In this situation, though, it didn’t seem to be the airlines that were behind these policies, but rather the airport authority. Specifically, the airport authority reportedly banned airline lounges from belonging to Priority Pass, instead forcing Priority Pass to only partner with the Coral and Miracle lounges (which have several locations at the airport).

As it turns out, that’s not the extent of the new restrictions, though. We’re now also seeing the airport reportedly restrict the ability for travelers to lounge hop. Based on the published lounge access rules of oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance, you typically have quite a bit of flexibility as to which lounge you’d like to visit at an airport (within that alliance), either based on the class of service you’re traveling in, or your elite status.

For example, if you’re a oneworld business class passenger departing Bangkok, you could typically visit the Cathay Pacific Lounge, Japan Airlines Lounge, or Qatar Airways Lounge. However, there are increasingly reports of lounges now restricting these kinds of arrangements, not due to their own policy changes, but due to being forced to by the airport authority. There are stories of travelers being denied entry to the Cathay Pacific lounge, with agents there explaining this is due to a new airport policy.

There are also reports of this now being implemented at more lounges, including Star Alliance lounge locations. For now we’ll have to mark this as “developing,” and if anyone has any data points, I’d appreciate them. The airport authority hasn’t been terribly transparent here, so it’s hard to know exactly what’s going on.

Airports of Thailand is taking things a bit too far

It’s hard to know what exactly is going on here, other than that it’s the airport authority pushing these changes, and not the lounge operators. Like, there’s no chance that the Air France-KLM, Oman Air, and Turkish Airlines lounges all wanted to leave Priority Pass, since that was a major revenue source, and key to making the economics of these lounges work.

Obviously there’s a new push to sending people to Coral and Miracle lounge locations. Now, why that’s the case is anyone’s guess:

• Did the lounge operators sign an agreement with the airport authority whereby they pay higher rent in exchange for more (forced) business?
• Does someone senior in the airport authority and/or government have a stake in these lounge operators?

No matter how you slice it, these are some pretty customer unfriendly changes, which are clearly intended to serve some party other than the traveling public. It’s going to be interesting to see how soon there are lounge closures, given that the business models of some lounges just don’t work without this additional revenue.

Bottom line

We’re increasingly seeing arbitrary lounge restrictions added at Bangkok Airport (BKK), in an initiative that Airports of Thailand (AOT) seems to be behind. First we saw all airline lounges removed from Priority Pass, so that all passengers are sent to the Coral and Miracle lounges. Now we’re seeing the airport authority override typical alliance lounge access policies, to prevent passengers from visiting multiple (or different) lounges.

What do you make of these new lounge restrictions at Bangkok Airport?