Several weeks ago, American Airlines announced plans to launch a new lounge concept. There’s now an exciting update, as this lounge has just opened.
In this post:
Provisions by Admirals Club Charlotte now open
Today (August 19, 2025), American has opened the new Provisions by Admirals Club lounge concept at Charlotte Airport (CLT), which is a first-of-its-kind space for American, created for travelers on the go.
The roughly 2,000 square foot space is located in Concourse A, near gate A1, and is designed for speed, simplicity, and convenience. It’s open daily from 6:15AM until 10:45PM. So, what can customers expect in these lounges?
- One-on-one customer support, with two Admirals Club representatives available on-site, for personalized travel assistance
- Flexible food and drink options with a grab & go concept, offering a variety of sandwiches, salads, snacks, and fresh fruit
- A streamlined experience, with a clean design and high-top standing tables, and minimal furniture to create an environment that supports quick visits and high volume traffic
Breakfast is served from 6:15AM until 11AM, and features light bites, including pastries, snack mixes, yogurt and fruit, along with more substantial breakfast meal boxes. All day offerings are served from 11AM until 10:45PM, and feature a mix of salty snacks, sweet treats, and filling meal boxes. A beverage station allows for travelers to grab canned and bottled beverages, coffee, and tea, to take on their trip.
Here’s how American Chief Customer Officer Heather Garboden describes this concept:
“We’re excited to open this new lounge space for our customers at CLT. Millions of customers travel through CLT on American every year and the Provisions by Admirals Club lounge is focused on providing those customers with an easy and convenient solution during their travel journey.”
Access to the Provisions by Admirals Club lounge follows the same policies as traditional Admirals Club access, so you can learn all about access requirements here.
My take on American’s new grab & go lounge concept
I’m really happy to see American introducing this new concept. A few initial thoughts:
- American really is making a lot of small but material improvements in recent times, and I’m delighted to see that
- Charlotte desperately needs more Admirals Club lounge capacity or options, so this should help for those on the go, especially given the short connections that many travelers have at the airport
- The actual space looks like it was done on a budget and as a makeshift solution, but I guess who really cares, since this at least allowed the facility to be opened ASAP
Once again, American is following here rather than leading. But when you’re behind, I guess that’s the way to go. 😉 This essentially seems to be American’s version of the United Club Fly concept, which is similarly a grab & go lounge that United now offers at two hubs. Even before that, United wasn’t the first to come up with the grab & go concept:
- In 2019, we saw the introduction of the Air Canada Cafe in Toronto, which is the same idea; it’s a small lounge with a selection of food & drinks that you can take with you
- More recently, in the United States we’ve seen the opening of Capital One Lounges, like the Capital One Lounge DFW, which also offer a grab & go selection, including complimentary food & drinks
While the Provisions by Admirals Club space as such looks less elegant than the United Club Fly concept, on the plus side, American has customer service in the lounge, which could prove useful.
Bottom line
American has launched the Provisions by Admirals Club concept, with the first location having just opened in Charlotte. This is essentially a grab & go space for those with Admirals Club access, where you can grab a drink and/or snack, and get help from an Admirals Club agent for any travel needs.
While this might not be the most impressive version of a grab & go lounge facility that we’ve seen, this is still progress, especially given the abysmal Charlotte Admirals Club experience.
What do you make of the Provisions by Admirals Club lounge concept?
I spent 30 minutes in Provisions today. The space isn’t much to speak of but great service and solid healthy food options.
Fine concept, but it makes the lounge situation in Charlotte about 2% less dire than before:
- the very large club between C and D, which is a terrific time warp back to 1997 and is always crowded and filthy
- the club on B, which was renovated but has the layout and ambiance of a railroad galley
- nothing at all on the perenially miserable Concourse E, which after several extensions...
Fine concept, but it makes the lounge situation in Charlotte about 2% less dire than before:
- the very large club between C and D, which is a terrific time warp back to 1997 and is always crowded and filthy
- the club on B, which was renovated but has the layout and ambiance of a railroad galley
- nothing at all on the perenially miserable Concourse E, which after several extensions is now a full 15 minute walk from any other club
I don't think anyone can dispute that Charlotte is the nation's worst connecting hub... right up there with Denver Stapleton in the 1980s and Detroit in the 1990s. Both of those eventually got fixed, but CLT and AA seem content to keep jamming more flights on larger-gauge aircraft through a complex that is collapsing under the strain.
The CLT Admirals lounge is embarrassing. When a lounge is full, I would rather grab and go to the gate (empty gate area)...so this is fine.
AA HQ is full of soccer mom types and grandma's/pa's who have middle America taste...and quite frankly, very uncool and always two decades behind the times. This looks like a Panera Bread (someone's idea in Dallas of hip and cool).
I do not dislike Dallas. It's just...
The CLT Admirals lounge is embarrassing. When a lounge is full, I would rather grab and go to the gate (empty gate area)...so this is fine.
AA HQ is full of soccer mom types and grandma's/pa's who have middle America taste...and quite frankly, very uncool and always two decades behind the times. This looks like a Panera Bread (someone's idea in Dallas of hip and cool).
I do not dislike Dallas. It's just not globally hip or cool.
Ughh, even though I continue to dislike Delta, they come across as fairly cool (thanks even more to Virgin). DL is always giving cool vibes, and never middle America Panera bread/Lululemon soccer mom/hot grandma.
Anyway, its an improvement nonetheless, and enough nice talk about DL.
Remember when the AA Exec card AF changed to $595 and they said premium foods are on the way and they’re going to uplevel the experience? The most I saw was fresh-made guacamole, and they directly credited that as a short-term thing to the credit card.
I now usually skip the AA lounge and head to AS instead…
I don't think the food is amazing, but it's clearly an upgrade from what was there previously: charcuterie, rotating hot entrees at both breakfast and dinner, etc.
I don't think the food is amazing, but it's clearly an upgrade from what was there previously: charcuterie, rotating hot entrees at both breakfast and dinner, etc. Also - the guacamole wasn't part of the upgrades - it had been there for a long time before the upgrades were announced.
Ah, wasn’t aware of the guacamole station. And perhaps it’s personal taste, but the shrimp kimchi fried rice (LAX, SFO at least) was there for many months longer than it should have been. Tasted truly awful, and I love Korean food. ;_;
I think everyone has their personal experience but “is the food hot” is a long way from “does this compete with an Amex lounge’s catering”? Their marketing definitely indicated the latter.
This is a good first step. I think more lounge pressure will be alleviated once CLT gets its inevitable Flagship Lounge.
Noticed this location when I transited CLT… yesterday, and remembered reading about it. Missed it by a day!
It looks incredibly tiny from the outside but if people aren’t lingering I guess you don’t need much space.
"Several weeks ago ..." - considering your use of several, Ben, this could mean 2 and 50.
You literally used "several" to mean "a few". Man, you love that word, yet have no idea what it means.
Several is defined as more than two and ‘less than many’. Since he wrote about this the first time 4 weeks ago, I’d argue that’s a fair definition.
Also, this is the hill you want to die on?
Not some random fangorl in the comments defending Ben. You know he's taken, right?
Who cares if they announced it 2 or 50 weeks ago? It's fine to say it was announced several weeks ago.
I think DCA and PHX would be good locations to roll this out next. Those airports I’ve noticed have a lot of shorter connections so a concept like this might make sense there.
Where? They could convert the lounge at the high A’s because it’s the right size and downstairs, but wouldn’t that be a downgrade of sorts? Given the segmentation of the T4 concourses, you likely won’t be able to go out of your way with a short connection, especially if you booked the 25 MCT special.
Could make sense if they got something on the corner near A1 or B1, but there’s no space.
This looks promising - the food in the all day menu pic looks fresh and healthy. Whereas UA's grab-n-go is prepackaged (Covid-era), less healthy food items off the back of a Sysco or Shamrock foods truck.
This is especially good being way out on the A gates--it's a long trek to the C/D or B clubs, especially if you're going in and out of A. Bravo, AA!
Sometimes the connections are so short in Charlotte like 35 minutes and something like this would come in very handy because you don’t have time to really gather stuff up in a regular club
While I like the idea I have to wonder if this is going to work out. I can see people now loading their bags up with 2-3 days worth of food. On Saturday at BOS there were some breakfast bars out and before they could be taken away to make room for lunch items some woman grabbed every one of them and shoved into her bag. Unfortunately that's where society has devolved to.
Someone posted that the food and beverages are at a manned station on FT. Makes it harder to load up for multiple days
Doesn’t DL have something similar in ATL?
Yes, Delta has a Grab & Go SkyClub at ATL Terminal B.
The access rules sound a little different though as you can only go to the SkyClub OR the Grab & Go within a 3 hour period - i.e., if you go into the Grab & Go, you are prohibited from entering any other SkyClub for 3 hours.
They have not expanded the concept, so it seems like this was designed specifically as a reliever for the ATL Terminal B SkyClub.
That's a poor policy. Imagine having a tight connection, so you stop at the grab and go. Then your connecting flight is delayed and you wish to head to the Sky Club, but are turned away. I'd be pissed
Yes, that's exactly why I never use the Delta Grab & Go. While the ATL Terminal B SkyClub sometimes has a line, I have never encountered a line at the T, A, C, D, E, or F Delta SkyClubs and the FlyDelta App displays the crowd levels of all SkyClubs so you can decide which one to go to. So, there is no reason to "risk" going to the Grab & Go, in my experience.
I love this. The meaning of an airport lounge has materially changed over the last 10-20 years. They're no longer a reliable calming oasis catering to the business traveler who wants a drink. They're now often at capacity, full of obvious leisure travelers (this mix-shift of course reflects the traveling populace at large), and the only real benefits are:
fast free wifi
free food
If I'm on a tight connection and unable to wait...
I love this. The meaning of an airport lounge has materially changed over the last 10-20 years. They're no longer a reliable calming oasis catering to the business traveler who wants a drink. They're now often at capacity, full of obvious leisure travelers (this mix-shift of course reflects the traveling populace at large), and the only real benefits are:
fast free wifi
free food
If I'm on a tight connection and unable to wait in line to get into a lounge, I still want free food. Good on UA for starting the United Club Fly concept and on AA for stealing the idea (good artists copy, great artists steal).
No big surprise really since the profit is now with hawking credit cards instead of the actual transport of pax & cargo .... And, the decline of the business traveler versus leisure oriented...