Five tips for your stay in a ‘silent’ airport lounge

Airport lounges which don’t have boarding announcements are a delight, until you lose track of time and scramble for your flight!

By David Flynn, December 14 2023
Five tips for your stay in a ‘silent’ airport lounge

While most airport lounges buzz with boarding announcements – something which I actually find quite enjoyable, as flights to far-flung destinations are called and travellers set out on their journey – every now and again you encounter a 'silent lounge'.

That’s the jargon for a lounge where no flight announcements are made, except in the case of serious delays.

The upside is blissful silence: you can relax without the constant barrage of boarding calls and notification of delayed flights

The downside? It’s 100% your responsibility to be at the boarding gate on time.

You can’t rely on that “final boarding call” or even somebody paging you by name to proceed immediately to gate such-and-such.

Here are five simple tips to avoid being that person frantically dashing through the airport to make their flight.

1. On your first visit to a new lounge, ask at the service desk if they make boarding calls. It doesn't get any easier than that.

2. Also ask how long it will take to get from the lounge to the boarding gate for your flight. Allow extra time if you've got to wheel a trolley bag through the crowds and if there is an additional layer of security at the boarding gate, such as at Singapore.

3. Now that you know how long it’ll take to get to the gate, set an alarm on your smartphone for the appropriate time to leave the lounge.

4. As an added precaution, download the app for the airline or airport – or tap into apps such as Tripit and Flighty – to get boarding alerts as well as keeping tabs on changes to the gate or departure time.

5. A more low-tech approach is to sit near one of the video monitors which list each departure and keep an eye on it as your flight time gets closer.

WML
WML

15 Feb 2023

Total posts 5

I for one am in favor of lounge flight announcements. I can not understand how airlines can designate lounges as "silent" when they encourage or turn a blind eye to uncontrolled children or passengers who make/take loud and unreasonably long phone calls. That being said, I have been in "silent" lounges (DOH,SGN,HAN come to mind) where staff roam the lounge with current flight info on hand held boards. Electronic flight info screens are OK........when they are working with current updates.


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