My home airport of Miami International (MIA) isn’t exactly award-winning. I mean, the airport did recently rank first place for lost bags, but I don’t think that’s the kind of accolade that most airports are after.
Historically, the lounge situation at the airport has been rather grim, but that’s slowly changing. American is building a new Flagship Lounge, a British Airways Lounge is opening, and a new credit card lounge is also expected to be announced soon. Now there’s yet another positive development.
Air France will open its own lounge in Miami
I’m subscribed to receive email updates about the Miami-Dade Airport Committee Agenda. These airport meetings often contain all kinds of interesting nuggets, given that airport construction has to be approved in advance. I just received the agenda for the upcoming meeting, and was hoping to learn more about which parties submitted a bid to open a new lounge in Concourse E. Instead, I discovered something else.
Air France plans to open its own lounge in Miami, per this 96-page document. The expectation is that the lounge will be 7,370 square feet, and it’ll feature both an indoor space and an outdoor terrace. If I’m looking at the diagram correctly, the indoor space will be 6,370 square feet, and the outdoor space will be 1,000 square feet. This would be the first lounge at the airport to have an outdoor terrace, so that’s cool.
The lounge will be located in Concourse H, on level three (one level above the concourse), near gates H12 and H15. Air France flights currently typically depart from the higher gates of Concourse J, which is connected airside to Concourse H. I wouldn’t be surprised if Air France departures move over to Concourse H once the lounge opens, as there are some wide body gates over there as well.
Exact details about what we can expect from the lounge remain to be seen, though Air France is pretty consistent with its lounge offerings. The plan is that this will be a 10-year lease, with the possibility for a five-year extension. Air France will be on the hook for spending $7-8 million on construction, and will then have to pay roughly $96,000 in monthly rent.
The airline is expected to start making full rent payments as of March 2028, so I suspect that’s when the lounge is likely to open. As you can tell, that’s a long time from now, so we’ll have to be patient! Of course that timeline can always change.
This is exciting for the Miami lounge scene!
Currently, Air France premium passengers are sent to Delta’s Sky Club, which is hardly an exciting facility, and is also pretty consistently crowded. So the new Air France Lounge should be a massive upgrade over the current offering.
Air France does an excellent job with its outstation lounges, and also does a great job with the number of outstation lounges it has. In the United States, the airline otherwise has lounges in Boston (ORD), Houston (IAH), Los Angeles (LAX), New York (JFK), San Francisco (SFO), and Washington (IAD). The lounges are modern, a good selection of food, and a full bar, including pretty high-end drinks.
Given that Miami is an airport that consistently has La Premiere (first class), I suspect the lounge will also have a dedicated first class space. That’s because Air France has such an area at all of its US lounges that have first class.
Even beyond the specifics of this lounge, I’m just happy to see Concourse H & J get more lounge capacity. In addition to Delta’s facility, the terminal otherwise only has the Avianca-TAP Lounge, LATAM Lounge, and Turkish Airlines Lounge.
Bottom line
Air France plans to open its own lounge in Miami, and it’s expected to be around 7,400 square feet, including a 1,000 square foot terrace. The lounge will be located in Concourse H, and should be great, in line with Air France’s typical lounge offering in the United States. I look forward to learning more!
What do you make of plans for an Air France Lounge Miami?
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