Why was there a queue at 3am?

The airport was empty. The lounge had a queue.

One night at 3am I was standing in a lounge queue at T2 in Mumbai.

I did get in, but couldn’t find a seat, so I walked out and sat at my gate. It was empty, with a charging point and better chairs.

A few days earlier I’d taken a proper nap in an empty lounge at Heathrow on my Priority Pass. So why was this one full at 3am?

My best guess came from Mumbai airport’s departures board. No flight left between 2:50 and 4:15, which may explain why the gates were so quiet. Then 20 flights went between 6 and 7am, and the lounge lets you in three hours early, so from 3am anyone on those flights with a card like mine could try to get in.

Flights leaving Mumbai T2 domestic, each hour.

Growing up I thought lounges were for other people, rich people or people the airline knew. That’s how they started. The first one, at LaGuardia in 1939, was invite only. In India the door opened when banks started giving lounge visits away free with credit cards. Mine charged me Rs 2 (about 2 US cents).

So the lounge I queued for is the ordinary one now, and the special one has moved further in. At Delhi’s Terminal 3, the Encalm Privé opened in 2023 for business and first class passengers. Anyone else pays Rs 5,150 (about $60) for two hours. It opened at about 22,000 sq ft. The lounge most credit cards get you into there is about 2,800, by one reviewer’s measure.

Approximate floor areas of two lounges at Delhi T3.

So I used a credit card to get into a lounge, queued for it, and then left for the one place in the airport nobody wanted to sit.

Lounge or gate, which one are you? Hit reply, I read every one.

Akash

airport lounges · a sheets.works data drop

701 people, teams and companies who built their own way out of an app or device they paid for, from WHOOP and YouTube to smart TVs.

One true news sentence every morning, and you keep the five words that carry the story, which takes about two minutes and has no ads.

It’s also an app: App Store · Google Play