Review: Qantas First Class Lounge LAX

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Earlier this year I flew out of the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX and, despite having lived in Los Angeles for over 5 years, it was my first visit to the terminal for quite a while and it was my first chance to try out the Qantas First Class lounge which opened at the end of 2014.

I should start by saying that I’m a big fan of Qantas Lounges. While some people fawn over the Cathay Pacific Lounges (The Wing in particular) and while others, for reasons best known to them, love the Concorde Room at Heathrow T5, my favourite lounge in the world is the Qantas First Class lounge in Sydney. It’s fantastic.

Annoyingly I can’t find my photos of the Sydney lounge, so here’s one from Qantas.

While I wasn’t expecting the Qantas First Class lounge at LAX to match up to the lounge in Sydney (that would have been a highly unfair expectation) I did harbor high hopes. So what was it like?

The lounge is located on the 6th floor of the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT) and is separated from the OneWorld Business Class lounge by the Korean Airlines lounge.

The first impressions of the lounge are good. It’s clean, sleek and modern…and the furniture looks comfortable.  As soon as you enter, on your left, are are row of loungers that overlook an inner atrium of the terminal – I can recommend those!

Dotted around the lounge are a wide variety of seating options including armchairs & sofas….

And two seater tables….

You don’t truly get to see the size of the lounge until you’re about half-way in and it opens up to reveal the dining area…..

The lounge offers 2-seater and 4-seater dining tables which can be combined if you’re in a large party. Most importantly, Qantas hasn’t tried to save space by providing small tables (they’re a generous size) and hasn’t tried to maximise the room by cramming too many tables in – the lounge feels spacious.

Wine and soft drinks are available on a self-serve basis from various stations around the lounge. The selection of wines and Champagnes was pretty good….

If soft drinks, wine or Champagne isn’t what you’re looking for there’s another option – a bar.

The bar is pretty big (to say the least!) and stocks a wide variety of spirits, liqueurs and, if I remember correctly, beers as well.

The bar isn’t just for alcohol….it has a great coffee machine too:

If you don’t feel like asking  the barman for a coffee you can always use one of the self-service machines in the lounge…..

….but when the barman can make as good a flat-white as this there’s no earthly reason to make your own:

One of the highlights of the better first class lounges is that they offer good restaurant quality meals that you can enjoy before a flight. It doesn’t really matter what class you’re flying, food never tastes as good at 38,000ft as it does on terra-firma. And it tastes even better on terra-firma when it’s free! 🙂

The menu at the Qantas First Class lounge wouldn’t be out of place at a lot of decent bistros (click to enlarge):

I wan’t particularly hungry but I felt I should try something anyway…..so I went for the Korean beef burger with “kimchi and gochujang sauce”.

Not the greatest pictures I’ve ever taken but you’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was very tasty….although I’m none the wiser as to what kimchi or gochujang are.

For those wishing to freshen up before a long flight the lounge offers showers…. but not a spa (which, to my mind, isn’t a big miss).

The shower facilities are spacious and well maintained….

…and are fitted out with Australian, Aspar, toiletries….

Overall

As far as lounges go this is a great one to visit. Is it as good as Sydney,? No, Sydney has more light and is bigger still. But that doesn’t really matter. It’s easily the best lounge I’ve visited in the US (although as most of those belong to US airlines that’s not saying much) and it’s clearly making an effort to be as good as it can be.

The staff seem happy and that was reflected in the level of service received – it was top notch. The feeling of space is very nice and they’ve managed to make the lounge feel quite light despite the lack of natural light on three sides.

The selection of food on offer was impressive and the waiting time for the food (around 20mins) wasn’t bad at all. I’m not one for drinking a lot before a flight but, to my eye, it looked like there was just about everything anyone could want on offer either behind the bar or at the self-pour stations. And if they don’t have something you want I’ve got a feeling they may just try to get it for you (I may try that out next time I’m passing through).

If the photos in this review weren’t enough, take a look at this short Qantas YouTube video that they put together for the lounge opening a little under a year ago:

A big thumbs up to Qantas for this lounge – I just wish we could drag the US airlines into vaguely the same league.