TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card welcome offers, earning rates and benefits and some credit card benefits will require enrollment. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.
American Express has today announced that it plans to open its 16th Centurion Lounge at Washington D.C.’s Reagan National Airport (DCA) and it has confirmed existing plans to almost double the size of the Centurion Lounge in San Francisco and to triple the size of the Centurion Lounge in Seattle.
Washington Reagan Centurion Lounge
Amex has said that the new lounge in DC will not open before “late 2022” as it will form part of Reagan National’s $1bn “Project Journey” which, among other things, will see the airport opening a new concourse, removing the infamous Gate 35X bus gate, moving security checkpoints, and opening new retail and dining facilities for travelers.
With the opening date for the new Washington DC Centurion Lounge still well over a year away, American Express isn’t in a position to let us know very much about its new facility.
We know that the new lounge will be “built from the ground up”, that it will be located in National Hall, near Terminal B (after security), that it will have floor-to-ceiling windows with airfield views, and that it will offer all the usual amenities associated with Centurion Lounges (complimentary custom bar and food menu, premium restrooms and shower suites, access to high-speed Wi-Fi, noise-buffering workspaces, etc…), but that’s about it. There don’t even appear to be any artist’s renderings available to give us an idea of what to expect.
Stay tuned as TFM will have more updates on this lounge as and when Amex provides us with them.
Seattle & San Francisco lounges expanding
Amex has put out some news today about the planned expansion of the Seattle and San Francisco Centurion Lounges but as far as I can tell, nothing has been revealed that we didn’t know already, except for the fact that we now know that we won’t see the changes in Seattle and San Francisco until late 2022.
Seattle Centurion Lounge
The Centurion Lounge in Seattle will grow to almost three times its current size as it relocates from its current location opposite Gate B3 to the mezzanine level of the airport’s Central Terminal (above the central food court).
The expansion will see the lounge go from being the smallest lounge in the network (approx. 4,500 sq ft) to one of the larger ones (approx. 13,800 sq ft) and it will feature new seating areas that “capitalize on the open-air atrium location” and it will offer guests views of the airport apron and the Olympic Mountains.
The significant increase in size means that the new Seattle Centurion Lounge will not only be able to house more guests in comfort, but it will also offer more restrooms, more private phone rooms, and more “noise-buffering workspaces” as well as more general-purpose seating too.
The only images we seem to have of the new lounge are the conceptual layout images from the Port of Seattle that date back to the middle of last year…
…and this rendering from Amex:
I guess we’ll have to wait until closer to the opening date to get any real idea what the new Seattle Centurion Lounge will look like.
San Francisco Centurion Lounge
As with the other two lounges mentioned in this post, details surrounding the expansion of the San Francisco Centurion Lounge are thin on the ground…but there are one or two things that we know for sure:
- The expanded lounge will be almost 16,000 sq ft in size
- Guests will see a new menu from Executive Chef Ravi Kapur
- The expanded lounge areas will allow Amex to add a second bar and cafe area, more restrooms, more private phone rooms, and more private workspaces.
For more information, we’ll have to wait until closer to the refurbishment’s completion date of “late 2022”.
Who can access Amex Centurion Lounges?
Access to Amex Centurion Lounges is restricted to the holders of the following cards:
- card_name (review)
- card_name (review)
- The Centurion Card® from American Express
- card_name (review)
- card_name
Holders of the Skymiles Reserve cards can only access the Centurion Lounges when flying with Delta.
As of 1 February 2023, holders of Amex’s Platinum Card and SkyMiles Reserve Cards are now charged $50 for each guest they bring into a Centurion Lounge (up to two guests) although Platinum Card holders can get this rule waived if they spend at least $75,000 per year on their card
There is no change to the Centurion Card’s guess access privileges.
For flyers originating at an airport with a Centurion Lounge, access is granted a maximum of 3 hours before their scheduled departure time. For flyers connecting at an airport with a Centurion Lounge, that limitation is waived.
Bottom line
In late 2022 we can expect American Express to open a new Centurion Lounge at Washinton DC’s Reagan National Airport as well as unveiling the new Centurion Lounge in Seattle and the refurbishments at the Centurion Lounge in San Francisco. For flyers who visit these airports with any significant frequency, this makes the Amex cards that offer Centurion Lounge access a little bit more valuable.
