I hate airline travel. It is all so tedious, the drive to the airport, parking, taking the shuttle to the terminal, the checking-in line, the security line ritual with TSA and then the wait for your flight in the usually crowded gate area, sitting in a cramped plane for some hours, and the process at the destination, such as waiting for your bag at the carousel, and getting to the taxi cab location. The only redeeming feature is that it gets you to your destination so much more quickly than any other way. In my case, if I can drive to my destination in six or seven hours (about 400 miles), I prefer to do so since the total travel time is about the same and the aggravation is much less.

Of all the above listed discomforts of air travel, the one that I find least tedious is the waiting at the gate. If the seats are reasonably comfortable and I have access to an electrical outlet in case my computer battery runs low and the wi-fi is decent and free, I am fine waiting for even a few hours in case of a layover or flight delays. If the seats on either side of me are vacant, I consider that a nice bonus.

In walking through the terminals, I have noticed the existence of places labeled ‘lounges’ with various identifiers of airlines attached, suggesting that they are only accessible to people with some sort of membership pass. But in this amusing article by Zach Helfand, he informs me that there is an entire world behind those portals that are sought out by the wealthy and not-so-wealthy who prefer not to hobnob with the hoi polloi that make up the people in the concourses. These places offer plush surroundings, comfortable chairs, fancy food, drinks, massages, facials, manicures, spas, even pool tables and actual swimming pools.

There is a competition among airlines to use this private lounge access as a way to get more money, exclusivity being the appeal.

Ryan was diamond-medallion tier on Delta, but this did not afford him admission to any of the three Delta lounges at J.F.K. “If you’re platinum or diamond medallion on Delta and travelling internationally, you’re allowed into the Virgin Clubhouse but not the Delta Sky Club, unless you’re flying Delta One,” he said. “Delta is very judgy. They make you feel like you did something special to get in, to be worthy.”
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Like Venice or the “Mona Lisa,” lounges can become victims of their own appeal. Initially, the lounge glasnost was a letdown. People expected the Elizabeth Taylor movie “The V.I.P.s,” which was set in a Heathrow lounge where white-tuxedoed servers carried trays of champagne and patrons discussed tax shelters. Instead, they got “bad hummus and sweaty pretzels,” Greenberg, the travel editor, said. At least you could get in. The more lounges improved, the more crowded they became—lounge gentrification. It’s not uncommon to see a lounge line snaking through the concourse. Inside, seats are scarce. The difference between out there and in here can be blurry—shoe taker-offers, phone talkers, seat hoggers. There are ninety-minute waits for Delta Sky Clubs, standby lists at Chase Sapphire lounges. Queuers would rather sit on the floor than skip the lounge for a chair at the gate, a desperation that might have something to do with Instagram envy, inequality, or an overabundance of premium-economy professionals with business-class expectations. The reason for the lines is obvious: the airlines started letting more people in.
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Lounge purveyors view overcrowding as a grave long-term threat. To address it, Delta recently changed its admission policies, capping the number of annual visits and prioritizing American Express passengers. United has a similar policy with Chase. The airlines are also increasing supply. Emirates’ business-class lounge in Dubai is a hundred thousand square feet, which is significantly larger than J.F.K.’s original terminal. United is building a lounge in Houston that will be fifty thousand square feet. “It’s a little bit larger than a football field,” Aaron McMillan, who runs United’s hospitality programs, told me. The only space they could find big enough to mock up the floor plan was an airplane hangar.

I keep getting credit card offers that are tied in with airlines. It appears that these tie-ins are highly profitable for airlines, especially when they are tied in with lounge access.

Credit-card deals have become the core of the airline industry. During the pandemic, United’s mileage program, built around its partnership with Chase, was valued at around twenty billion dollars; the rest of the business—the passenger part—was ten billion dollars underwater. Annually, charges on Delta’s American Express cards total about one per cent of the U.S. G.D.P. (“It’s amazing how much money people will spend for a free flight,” Harteveldt observed.) In most years, the programs account for much of the airlines’ profits. This year, Delta’s card will earn the company eight billion dollars. Why do people sign up for the cards? “Lounge access is the No. 1 reason,” a Delta executive recently said, of their Reserve card. Since the airline business is largely a credit-card-loyalty business, and since the credit-card-loyalty business is largely a lounge business, it’s only a minor stretch to think of Delta or United as lounge companies that also fly planes. In Atlanta alone, there are two lounges that together cost more than a hundred million dollars to build.

Then there are those additional lounge perks that, for a price, will let you avoid all contact with the masses at the airports.

The fancier the lounge, the less the lounge goer has to interact with the actual airport. “We have Porsches,” Hiroko told me, by the windows. “You see them down below?” She led me to the tarmac, where there was a fleet of six cars. For an extra five hundred and fifty dollars, Delta will drive you straight to the plane and pick you up on the other end.
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In the U.S., the best you can do is P.S., short for “private suite,” which houses its lounges in bespoke buildings far away from the terminal so that you never even have to deal with the airport at all. (Their tarmac cars are BMWs.) … You still have to go through T.S.A. and customs, but they feel more like the help you’ve invited into your home. “For example, when you approach C.B.P., the podium is actually a custom piece of furniture that we’re designing with them,” Liu said. Each departure and arrival with P. S. costs thirteen hundred dollars. (For an extra sixteen hundred and fifty dollars per person, a car will pick you up directly from the plane and drop you off at your final destination.) “I don’t know where you live,” Liu told me, “but you really should try it.”

Alas, as with all such attempts at keeping up with the Joneses, the Joneses just keep raising the bar.

The thing about lounging is that it’s impossible to lounge without worrying that someone, somewhere, is lounging better. My swordfish was, frankly, perfect, but would it have been even more perfect in Frankfurt, where Lufthansa has an entire first-class terminal whose restaurant has items from all of the cities in its route system flown in fresh daily? Had I missed out on the best lounge without even knowing it? The Virgin Clubhouse at Heathrow used to have a hydrotherapy, bath-steam, room-tanning, booth-ski simulator, and a four-hole putting green with a sand trap.

All this is clearly meant to be more than being in comfort for the few hours waiting for one’s flight. It is also to enable people to feel superior to the rest of us. I can see why airlines encourage this as it gives them an additional source of revenue. Less understandable is why so many people, even those who are not so wealthy, people buy into it. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to spare oneself a couple of hours of being in proximity with ordinary people.