Back in Chicago O'Hare
Chicago O’Hare is not one of my favourite airports. Last year I ended up stuck here for over a day because of a cancelled flight. But so far this morning things have gone to plan. I got through immigration and customs really quickly. Transferring to another terminal took a bit longer, because of the security queues, but it went smoothly enough.
At the minute I’m sitting in United’s business lounge. It’s not particularly impressive but at least I’ve managed to find somewhere to sit and use my computer.
I was surprised by how unfriendly the staff are who check your boarding card as you enter the lounge. Whilst I was waiting to get in a Japanese man approached the desk and asked about problems with his wifi. No-one could help him and the response he got was “look, I just don’t know”. And then they turned away from him and left him standing looking confused with his computer. I know that the staff may not be able to help with what they think are technical questions but they could have at least said that they were sorry. Instead they looked really put out that he had asked them a question.
Unlike other lounges I have been in you are expected to pay for most of the food and drink. It’s seems that you also have to pay for wifi if you are travelling with a Star Alliance carrier other than United. I am flying with United but nobody offered me either drink vouchers or wifi. I had to ask for the wifi voucher when I heard the other members of staff offer this to people they were checking in. I miss the friendly ANA staff who treated me so well at Narita airport.
June 13th, 2010 at 9:04 am
Business lounges have been getting steadily worse over the last few years. I had a similar experience in the United lounge in DC a couple of months ago: even with a wifi voucher I couldn’t work out where I was meant to enter the code, but no-one was even remotely interested in helping me. I eventually got it working myself, unlike the LOT lounge in Warszawa where the staff just kept insisting that their wifi doesn’t work with Macs! The food offering has also gotten much worse too – the DC lounge didn’t even really have anything beyond basic bar snacks. And then there’s LaGuardia where you can’t even get into the lounge at all unless you have a gold card, no matter what class you’re flying.
June 14th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Back in January I was in the business lounge in South Korea which had food, drink, massage chairs, showers, relaxation areas, and a classical pianist. It was very different than the lounges in America, not quite up to the Virgin Clubhouse in Heathrow standard, but still very good.