In late 2025, Air France announced plans to open a lounge at London Heathrow Airport (LHR), which is positive news for SkyTeam travelers departing from one of the airport’s main terminals. There’s now an exciting update, as the lounge has opened as of today, so we also have more details about what to expect from…
Continue reading: Air France Lounge London Heathrow Opens With Spa, First Class Section
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Back in the day, there was a dedicated Sky Team lounge at Heathrow.
Given the awful contract lounge they currently use, an Air France lounge is long overdue – especially with near-hourly flights between Heathrow and Paris. Hopefully, it won’t become overcrowded with KLM passengers.
Remarkably, Air France serves a meal that’s better than what Delta offers on many domestic flights, plus real champagne in business class on the one-hour flight between LHR and CDG. If you’re lucky (or charming), you can get two or three glasses of champagne or Chablis during the flight.
There has been construction at the old Plaza Premium arrivals lounge for many months, its passenger entrance was land side but when I looked through the boards I could see through to airside so maybe that’s the location.
By the way, the Gulf Air lounge in Terminal 4 sells day passes. They don't advertise this but they do. I paid 40 British pounds earlier this year. Spent 3 hours there. Better than average food and a good wine selection.
Now if only Air France would do something about its awful lounges in Toronto and Houston.
The AF lounge in Montreal is decent at least. Hopefully they’ll renovate the others soon.
Those ‘dedicated SkyTeam lounges’ aren’t always ‘better’… like, the International terminal at SYD has one, downstairs, super-crowded… not a fan. Centurion there has better food anyway. Qantas is obviously best, but, if you’re flying Delta to LAX, it’s slim pickings…
Those are KLM Crown Lounges and they are excellent. Why do you call them Air France?
I do wonder if this was a recent decision/change of mind - due to the changes to BA Club where quite a significant number of former BA loyal flyers moved over to AF (with the status match).
But yes, it would be a good addition. With the number of KLM and AF flights combined, this does give a good reason to have this lounge ever since the closure of the ST lounge.
LOL. Tim, I’d rather take LCY-AMS then KL TATL, if only for a delft blue house…
Btw, since United is now working with B6, I was able to burn some Mileage Plus points for Mint TATL at a good rate. Perhaps, nonstop is best, even without the Bols-filled trinket.
LCY is a gem. but, of course, no US carrier serves it.
Whoever figures out how to make LCY to the US work would get a very nice bump in loyalty. The BA A319 nonstop from the US and w/ a stop in Ireland is a nice "once upon a time"
Problem is that LCY's runways are still short enough that even the A220 could not take off from there nonstop to the US with a meaningful number of passengers
and I have used LCY to continental Europe hubs and beyond and it is super easy.
Currently could only be done on Saturdays but an LGA-LCY via SNN on a 221 could be a goldmine
Air France has its own lounge in Houston. As for Toronto, I believe it's marketed as a joint KLM/Air France lounge.
I'm one of those dissatisfied BA flyers that has moved to AF. Didn't do the status match. Platinum from just flying. As much as we all want non-stop flights to wherever, I'm willing to connect in Paris if it means a friendly environment and better service.
I wonder how much this decision was influenced by the BA Club status earning changes announced a year ago.
This will majorly sway some London based frequent travelers to jump ship.
It's odd that Air France wouldn't just locate to the terminal used by Virgin and Delta.
I wonder if SkyTeam may well relocate to T4 as part of Heathrow’s discussions with airlines at the beginning of the year about terminal re shuffles, Ben covered the topic earlier.
Does AF offer any special ground services at LHR for F passengers? I imagine they’d get an escort to this lounge and maybe a roped off area.
It’s an especially nice poke in the eye considering BA (or OW generally) have virtually no options at CDG.
Actually the Cathay lounge just re-opened at CDG, making it arguably one of the better lounges by food options, and there's also a Qatar premium lounge, which is solid too.
Not to mention there's even an Admiral's Club.
The big question is: will the spa actually ever be open? Every time I have flown through CDG (5 times this year), it has been closed...
I saw an AF 777 pushback at IAH yesterday. After seeing the a350 for years a thing of beauty.
Tim, thought Club World London City was actually an a318 (they had two of them), both since scrapped. Each were just 32 seats, 2-2, all lie-flat. BA even used BA1, BA2, B3, BA4, like it had done for Concorde. It was the closest thing to what La Compagnie does today for CDG, MXP, etc. Sadly, a casualty of the pandemic (2009-2020). At least preclearance westbound was in SNN. A220-300 could do it with the stop.
Ben had a great review in 2018: https://onemileatatime.com/british-airways-business-class-a318-review/
But it wont have food. The CDG lounges are the worst when its come to airline hub lounges in terms of F&B offerings.
That simply isn’t true. Air France’s lounges at Paris-CDG offer a self-serve bar with premium wines that are not only better than the complimentary wine available in Delta Sky Clubs and the Delta One lounge, but also superior to what Delta serves its Delta One (business-class) passengers in-flight on the longest and most expensive routes. Yes, the food buffet is more limited, but Air France also serves a full meal in business class on virtually 100% of its flights — even short 1-hour hops.
FNT Delta Diamond, who famously only cares about alcohol in airport lounges.
No, the point is that the food offerings are weak, buffet slop. That's not appealing at all.
It wouldn't matter because the VS Clubhouse isn't a standard SkyTeam lounge, so the benefits of reusing it are very limited.
When I have flown La Premiere out of LHR over the last few years, they have offered an escort and they have reserved a table in the lounge. I've always declined the escort, as it is just someone who walks you to the lounge and/or gate. No Porsche ride like at CDG. The ground service at LHR could certainly be improved.
I'm annoyed that Saudia refuses to follow SkyTeam rules and denies access to their lounge to customers on AFKL flights, because their lounge is quite good. Plaza Premium is quite bad, so this is a very good news and long overdue. I'm flying on KL out of LHR right after the Easter so hopefully I'll have a chance to test it out.
What? Food at CDG lounges is out of this world, at least in 2F. One of the best lounge meals out there. The only letdown are the bakery items which are below average not just by French standards.
@yoloswag420 - Huh? The main point of sharing terminals is seamless experience when connecting between different airlines. Surely removing the need for bus journey between terminals would matter a lot?
Is that paid option only when flying Saudia (economy), or even if flying other T4 airlines like AF/KL?
About time AF opening a lounge. The one i was directed to 3 weeks ago was awful.
Our lounge at the Houston George Bush international airport
Welcome to our Air France lounge
Every day from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Terminal D in front of Gate D12
https://wwws.airfrance.us/information/prepare/salons/iah
A lot of ex-BA customers have been very happy with the AF service, so this is very welcome. Does AF have rest areas for F/J business class customers connecting at CDG? The BA lounges at Heathrow, including their supposedly upscale Concorde Lounge, are horrific for connecting from one long haul to another long haul flight, no place to rest and poor showers, etc.
The AF CDG lounges are very solid nowadays. I would say they're a fair bit better than the SEN ones and on a completely different level than the BA and KLM equivalents.
Me too - status matched to platinum and have actually changed my behaviour slightly by adding 1 stopping thru SOU as an option. I live on Sussex / Hampshire border so if the connection in AMS is 2.5 hrs or less I’m to the good vs LHR. And now from LHR it’s majority AF so the lounge is great news
Does it not get you to the front of the security line too? With the new scanners you're not waiting for a long time anyway but it might be useful saving a few minutes.
Also a car transfer in T4 makes no sense whatsoever. It would take longer for you to go down to ground level, go around the terminal in a car, go up to the departures level and into the plane than it would for someone with mobility issues to walk! You only need plane transfers for large terminals (so a T5 one would be good to take F passengers from the Concorde Room to B and C gates.
So if you are a British Airways service passenger that decides to switch to Air France for premium travel, you will get this swanky lounge, but then you'll have to go to CDG lounges for business class. Lounges that have very poor food and beverage options, so poor that the crowded T5 BA lounges appear better.
There are many LHR-CDG flights all day, so the idea is you minimise your layover time in CDG and only spend a max of an hour or so (ideally less) there before boarding your connecting flight. It's not the same concept as e.g. the Middle East where you end up with a six hour layover in the lounge.
Speaking as a London-based BA GGL, this new lounge is therefore really quite interesting to me. Whilst I can't make the jump to Air France entirely, I'll be booking some La Première to Asia and the Middle East rather than taking BA F direct to try it out.
What are you talking about? AF lounges at CDG have some of the best food & beverage options among all business class lounges in Europe. Champagne served throughout the day, at least three hot dishes at meal times and more.
While I do think that the variety of the food spread at the CDG lounges has some room for improvement, the comparison to the dirty BA T5 canteens is absurd. A more interesting comparison would be flying via CDG vs flying via MAD, where the IB facilities are very good (but rarely get much credit for it).
I have a rare Air France business class flight out of Heathrow in September, looking forward to checking this out. Actually never been in Terminal 4 as have always only ever flown BA or AA out of Heathrow.
Last time I was at a CDG lounge business lounge there were two entrées. One option was boiled pasta with tomato sauce in a separate compartment, you have to mix it two.
The other and probably the only decent entree was roasted turkey. Except for 30 minutes they didn't even choose to replenish that. From my vantage point I saw about 40+ people open that empty panz looking for turkey and when it finally came, it was gone in like 5 minutes and then there wasn't anything replenished for another half an hour. If you're going to serve one decent entree at the very least you should have been structure to replenish it finishes out.
Yeah, they do have some mid- champagne which they even serve onboard but I would rather take the much maligned AA flagship lounge over any AF lounge at CDG.
In addition to all of the longstanding "Best _____" lists, it would be interesting to see a list of the best outstation airline lounges. Would be interesting to see if there are patterns for branded lounges outside of airlines' domestic networks. In the US, Air Canada's SFO lounge and Qantas's LAX First Class Lounge spring most readily to mind.
@VladG - I think problem with food at AF CDG lounges is that they only offer hot meals during standard meal times - which may be hard to follow when travelling. If you're flying at 18:50, you're not gonna eat your dinner after 18:30...
CX and QR would slap everyone out of the water. They have the best set of outstation lounges. And CX footprint is significantly wider than QR. Qantas' F lounge in SIN is drastically better than the LAX one as well.
VS Clubhouses are solid although there is a lot of variance given how different the setup is across SFO/LAX/JFK/IAD.
For US airlines, Delta's HND SkyClub is up there though. And UA's LHR club is one of their better ones.
It's got to be Emirates, nobody else has lounges in more than a handful of foreign outstations.