I don’t know how many times I have been to Terminal 1 at Nice Airport in France (certainly a fair few times more than I have been to Terminal 2) but it will be in quite high double figures. Quite a few times I have been in the position of having racked up sufficient air miles or whatever to qualify to be able to use the executive club lounge. That was the situation recently, when I went to France with my son. (Pictured on the home page is a plane on the runway at London’s City Airport ahead of our outbound flight.) So how was the experience?
To be honest, underwhelming. The food selection was paltry verging on the risible. Olives, crisps and peanuts were available but the nearest approximation to something one might generously categorise as a meal were small squares of cold pizza. (This was in France, remember!) True, wine was there for the taking but I didn’t fancy that given the time of day. Plus I had to drive once I’d got back to the UK.
While Nice might not be up to much in this regard, it isn’t the worst facility of its sort I have encountered. About 18 months ago my wife and I were flying home from Cancun in Mexico. Again, for whatever reason, we had become eligible to use the lounge. In this case there was nothing food-wise beyond the crisps and peanuts. What’s more, it was not located airside, which meant we still had security and the related palaver to go through, so it wasn’t like we could settle back and relax before boarding our plane. On another occasion, at a different airport somewhere in Europe, the so-called executive lounge was so crammed with people that we had to wait for a couple of flights to be called before they could fit us in. Having done that, the bathrooms were inoperable for some reason so we had to return to the main concourse in order to find a toilet.
In fact, one wonders just how much of a boon access to an executive lounge is. I have a friend who has flown so frequently with British Airways that he has a lifetime gold loyalty card. So what does he do when he gets to Heathrow ahead of boarding his plane. Head for the free food and drink in the first-class lounge? No – there’s a public airport bar there that he particularly likes. “The atmosphere is just so much more enjoyable,” he explains. I am in no position to argue.