Don’t miss your flight when visiting 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, July 31 2024
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.
Even some of the busiest airport terminals have ‘gone quiet’, such as Singapore’s Changi, with many lounges following suit. Boarding calls are no longer made at Qantas’ Singapore First and Business Lounges, for example.
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. If you’re not intimately familiar with the airport, 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’s an additional layer of security at the boarding gate, such as at Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
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 straight onto your phone, 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.
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
25 Jul 2013
Total posts 72
Been there done that.
On one of my trips, the local time on my Apple Watch + iPhone didnt automatically update upon landing (transit in Singapore coming back from India). I spent some time in the SQ lounge but used my watch to tell the time, rather than the departure screens. There were no boarding announcements, so I ended up missing my connecting flight. A very expensive mistake!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
23 Sep 2015
Total posts 33
I’m a big fan on silent lounges and airports. The non stop announcements made in the domestic terminals can be out of control. Surely people can work out where they need to be at an airport and what time
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
19 Aug 2011
Total posts 165
Realistically, most lounges in most seriously busy airports (LHR, HKG, DXB, DOH) for the hub airlines in particular don't do announcements because there would be incessant announcements.
07 May 2019
Total posts 14
With our apps etc, do we really need lounge announcements anymore? I know more than one person who gets a kick out of having their name paged over the 'tannoy' by refusing to leave the lounge until the last possible second. I leave as soon as boarding commences, if not earlier.
20 Nov 2015
Total posts 477
"I know more than one person who gets a kick out of having their name paged over the 'tannoy' by refusing to leave the lounge until the last possible second." Man, that's just SAD! And holds up everybody else who have already boarded.
20 Nov 2015
Total posts 477
I'm surprised the Qantas lounges at Changi don't do boarding calls any more, it's not like they have a lot of flights they have to call, compared to say SQ at Changi. CX still does calls at its SIN T4 lounge, easy to do because they just have a few flights each day, spread well apart, and nobody except CX passengers are in the lounge.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
08 Nov 2014
Total posts 15
I was in the BA lounge at Gatwick a couple of months ago awaiting a flight to Faro in Portugal. When we arrived in the lounge the departure board showed that the flight was delayed by over an hour. It was only by chance that we noticed the flight had been returned to its original schedule and was in fact boarding on time. Apparently a replacement aircraft had been found for the original very late incoming flight. When we commented to the lounge reception staff that it might have been idea to advise passengers that the flight was now on time and boarding they simply they don’t do boarding calls. So beware in BA lounges even if your flight is delayed.
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