Ready in your flight in Terminal B at Newark Liberty Worldwide Airport (EWR) is not precisely too inspiring.
The terminal’s low ceilings and crowded gate areas aren’t essentially essentially the most welcoming, and the concession choices aren’t all that significantly better than what’ll doubtless be served on board, particularly in the event you’re seated in enterprise class.
Whereas a long-term alternative for Terminal B is within the works, the excellent news is that there is an thrilling short-term repair for vacationers: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the airport, plans to award three new leases for lounge updates.
Here is the newest.
Air France plans new Newark lounge
Maybe essentially the most thrilling information is that Air France, one of many latest airways to serve Newark, needs to open its personal lounge on the airport.
The Paris-based service submitted a proposal for a seven-year lease of a 6,129-square-foot lounge in Newark’s Terminal B. If accredited on the upcoming Port Authority board assembly on Thursday, the lease would go into impact round Jan. 1, 2025. (The Port Authority board has really useful that the chief director transfer ahead with this proposal.)
Whereas particulars are scant, Air France can pay hire equal to roughly $13.4 million through the preliminary time period of the lease. It’s going to additionally make investments no less than $3 million to refurbish the lounge house.
There is not any telling the place precisely the Air France lounge could be situated, and the service declined to touch upon its pending lease proposal.
That stated, Air France simply readded flights to Newark in December 2022, after pulling out of the market in 2012.
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For the reason that airline is seeking to make investments a lot cash right into a everlasting lounge house, the newly resumed route from Newark to Paris appears to be doing properly sufficient to help such long-term funding.
British Airways plans overhauled Newark lounge
Along with the brand new Air France lounge, British Airways is planning to take a position no less than $8.5 million to “totally rehabilitate and refurbish the lounge house” that it makes use of at Newark’s Terminal B.
The airline’s present lounge at Newark is nearly common. It options sweeping apron views from floor-to-ceiling home windows, in addition to quite a lot of seating areas, nevertheless it may undoubtedly use some extra fashionable touches.
The Port Authority did not share any extra particulars in regards to the proposed upgrades, nevertheless it did say that the service would obtain one other seven-year lease valued at round $13.2 million if accredited by the company’s govt director.
La Compagnie retains its Newark lounge
Lastly, La Compagnie, the French all-business-class leisure-focused service, at the moment operates a lounge at Newark, dubbed Lounge&Co.
This outpost occupies the house of the former Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse, which mysteriously closed in mid-2023 with out discover. The house lay vacant for a while earlier than it emerged as a La Compagnie lounge earlier this yr.
The service did not put a lot work into the lounge — it nonetheless maintains a lot of the decor from the Virgin Atlantic days — nevertheless it does plan to resume its lease for the house.
The almost 5,000-square-foot lounge will price La Compagnie almost $8 million in hire for the subsequent seven years. Along with the lease funds, the airline would want to additionally make investments no less than $1.9 million “to refurbish the lounge,” the Port Authority says in its board agenda.
We’ll be following alongside carefully as a result of these enhancements to the passenger expertise at Newark’s most dreaded terminal cannot come quickly sufficient.
In fact, all of those lounge upgrades come because the airport additionally expects to debut a new American Specific Centurion Lounge in some unspecified time in the future in 2026.
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