Airport Lounges: Getting In, Hidden Perks and Expert Tips with Kevin Song
01:19:51 Share

- Airports can suck, the crowds, the chaos, the overpriced food, but airport lounges, they can make the whole experience so much better. Today, we're gonna share everything you need to know to get into the best airport lounges, the kind that completely change how you travel with free food, drinks, massages, nap pods, showers, and more. We'll dive into every single way you can get lounge access, no matter what airline you're flying or what seat you're in.

Whether that's through credit cards, memberships, elite status, or a few other creative hacks. Plus, we'll cover how to avoid the worst lounges, what cards are best for which type of lounges, how to skip the lines, and even how to hit up multiple lounges on a single trip. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. Now let's get into it right after this.

This episode is brought to you by Element. If you've listened to this show, you know I am always searching for ways to feel better, think clearer, and optimize my life. And Element is genuinely one of the simplest, most impactful upgrades I've made.

I drink Element every day and it's become the number one thing on my packing list whenever I travel. Here's why. Staying hydrated isn't just about drinking water. Electrolyte imbalances can lead to headaches, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, and most electrolyte drinks out there are packed with sugar or artificial ingredients that I just don't want in my body. But Element is different. It's zero sugar, zero artificial junk, just a perfectly balanced mix of electrolytes and sodium that's backed by science and tastes great.

Ever since I started drinking Element, I've noticed clearer focus throughout the day, better sleep at night, and I am more energized and primed for workouts and recovery. Honestly, it is hard to imagine going back. Whether you're an athlete or just someone like me trying to get the most out of every single day, you've got to try Element. And they're so confident you'll love it that they offer no questions asked refunds so you can try it totally risk-free.

So get your free sample pack with any Element purchase at allthehacks.com slash element L-M-N-T. This deal is only available through my link, so support the show and go to allthehacks.com slash element L-M-N-T and get hydrated.

Kevin, what is your favorite lounge? You know what? I got to go back to the Pier, first class in Hong Kong. It's a great lounge. It has a sit-down dining restaurant. They've got a spa where you can get back massages and things like that, foot massages.

They've got day rooms that when you lie in, you can look out the window and staring your face as Emirates A380 right there. The food is pretty great. The bar is really nice. It's super quiet. It's super peaceful. I got to say that's probably one of my favorite lounges in the world. And you can get to it with just one little Emerald status, which is really fantastic.

I try and go every single time I go to Hong Kong, whether I'm flying Cathay or Japan Airlines or whatever one world airline there is, and even an economy. I love going there. And it's a little bit of a trek from the rest of the airport, from the gates. I like it. I have not been. If I were to answer the question, I'd say my favorite lounge is...

the lounge that doesn't have a wait that's like where I am so that I can get a meal. But if you could take Dubai's Emirates first class lounge and put it in every airport, obviously that would be my preference. Even in SFO, the Emirates lounge, you board the plane through the lounge. You don't even have to leave the lounge. So Emirates has lounges dialed in just like 25 different things you can eat, meal service,

drink service, all kinds of stuff. If you're flying through Dubai and you have access to that lounge, highly recommend. We went one way in first, one way in business. Business lounge is also really nice.

And I think the thing I love about airport lounges is one, we all know that everything at the airport is expensive. And it feels good to get a meal at an airport for you and a partner, your whole family for free. It feels really good to just not be crammed in a row of seats and just have a little more space, especially if you're delayed, you have a long layover and you just need to kill some time to do it in a peaceful place that usually has reliable free Wi-Fi. I love it. That said,

Not all lounges are created equal. What's the worst lounge you've ever been to? You know what? You mentioned that what you want from a lounge is just peace and quiet, some room to stretch out and things like that. And there's a lot of lounges that don't get that basic part right. And I get it. Airport real estate is super expensive, right? But if I'm thinking about like the Hawaiian Airlines lounges in Hawaii, it's just a room. When I went, there wasn't even staff there. You scanned yourself into the room. There's no snacks. There's no drinks. It's just a room.

And it was crowded. So I'm like, why wouldn't I spend that time outside instead? And a lot of the airports in Hawaii are literally outdoors. So you could spend that in the sunshine instead of being stuck in this tiny little room. It made no sense to me why that lounge existed. We went to that lounge, but maybe it wasn't the same one because this one was staffed and we put our name down for some weight. And then we got a text and we're like, oh, finally we can go in. And we went in and we were like, there was water, like maybe coffee, but like that was it. And we were like,

Oh, yeah. We're just going to leave. Like, why would you go to that lounge? I have no idea. Then I've seen some other ones that are just so crowded that you can't even sit down. I remember one time I went to a Centurion lounge. I made my plate of food and I was excited to eat it. And I walked around the entire lounge, not a single open chair. So I put my food down and left because I can't eat it standing up. Where am I going to put my fork? It was a pretty bad experience. I went to a Centurion lounge.

I will say I learned this trick at the club lounge at SFO that if you don't find space, sometimes keep walking because there is secret rooms in some of these lounges. The Centurion Lounge at SFO opened up that whole back room in the last few years that if you didn't know where it was or how to get to it, you might not know that there's plenty of seating. So if you walk into a lounge and it's crowded, maybe ask someone, is there another place I can go?

But for the most part, I think some of the ways you access these lounges has gotten harder to combat that problem. And so by the end of this episode, I hope everyone says, oh, now I know the best ways to get in that lounge. Yeah, we're going to talk about everything from cards that get you in, different ways to access the lounges, all the different types of lounges. I don't think there will be a stone unturned when it comes to lounges. Hopefully, if anyone finds one, definitely shoot me an email. I would love to know what we missed. But yeah,

I will say that when I think broadly about lounges, they have all the purposes we talked about. But for the most part, I guess I indirectly pay, but you can get all of this relatively inexpensively through credit cards and status matching. Have you

Have you ever actually paid physical dollars to go into a lounge? I can't say that I have, but if I were going to do it, it would probably be Qatar. If you're flying business class, you can pay a surcharge to get into their first class al-safa lounge. That I would do. Yeah, I had that on my list of lounges with unique experiences. Evidently, the champagne list at that lounge is among the best in the world. I believe it. So that one, I have flown Qatar business, but I have not flown.

flown first. And I did not know that I could have paid to upgrade to that lounge. How many lounges do you think there are globally across all the airports? So we've got over 3000 lounges cataloged in our database. And let me tell you, when I was going through our initial list and going through and cleaning up the data and things like that, I did not realize how many random lounges and random airports there are across the world. I consider myself pretty well traveled. And there

There are so many airports, especially in Southeast Asia, in mainland China, that I've never even heard of. And they'll have like 20 lounges in it. I'm like...

What is this place? There's a lot of lounges out there for sure. I was trying to figure out which airport had the most number of lounges. And so I just started looking at the airports I thought would. And so SFO has 18. LAX has 25. Dubai has 27. And Heathrow has 38 lounges. So I think I'm excluding priority pass restaurants, which we'll get to, just airline lounges or restaurants.

operated lounges by other third-party networks. You'll be able to find the data and tell me, but I think Heathrow at 38 might be the most. 38's a lot. I think it'd be pretty hard for any airport to beat that.

that. Yeah. And the fun thing is by the end of this episode, I think people are going to be able to not only figure out how to get into multiple lounges on a trip, but you can go hop. I do that all the time. Yeah. Let's go to four lounges and be able to kind of compare them and see what's different. Or maybe we don't like this meal, go get another meal. Like we said before, some of them are terrible, so that's worth doing, but high level, let's talk a little bit about the types of lounges that exist. Cause I think we'll talk about the networks. We'll talk about how you get into them

And then we'll do a deeper dive on credit cards because I think that's probably the easiest, most accessible way for people to get in. So when I think about lounges and brands, one of them, which is probably the most well-known, are these lounges operated by airlines. In the U.S.,

the airline lounges seem to have a much wider footprint, right? So the United Club has probably 50 plus lounges around the world, whereas Air France doesn't have 50 lounges around the world. What do you think about American lounges? It's interesting because for the most part, internationally, if you are an elite status holder or whatever, you can just go into the lounge.

The U.S. airlines have done something unique where they started selling access to the lounges, either by holding a credit card or more commonly, at least in the past, holding a membership.

This happened during the deregulation period where airlines really needed money. So they started selling access to the lounges as a revenue generating stream. But as a result now, if you just have access and you're flying domestically, you generally will not have access to the lounge. Even flying domestic first class will not get you access to the lounge. And that's pretty unique across the world. But I have to give the airlines some credit because they have improved their product pretty dramatically in the last few years.

10 years ago, the average quality of these lounges were, to be completely honest, terrible. And we're talking United, American, and Delta mostly. Yeah, they were all pretty bad. But they've really stepped it up in the last few years. They've been renovating lounges. They've been expanding them. They've been adding hot food. They've been adding a lot of amenities that just make it more comfortable.

I personally have memberships to the two airlines that I fly the most American and United through credit cards. And you know what? I enjoy going to lounges because they're always there. Sometimes they're not the best, but they're predictable. Yeah. And I think the one thing that's nice is if you're flying a lot in the U S obviously first class business class, isn't going to get you into the lounges status. Isn't going to get you to the lounges. So you do need a membership, but

But a lot of times, especially like SFO, you might have a priority pass membership, but depending on the terminal you're flying out of, it might be a significant hike to go find that lounge. When you're traveling internationally, usually if you're changing planes, there is a priority pass or lounge you can access with status or something else pretty nearby. But domestically, I think it's hard to always find a lounge that's easy to get to.

Now, some airports are different than others. If you're flying out of Terminal 1 and SFO, there's a great priority pass lounge. You don't need to have any of this. Almost every premium credit card will get you into it. But if you're flying United,

When you're in Terminal 3, the United Club is the most convenient place to go. So there's those. And then some of the smaller airlines still have a footprint. So Alaska has like nine lounges. Air Canada has a handful across North America. I was looking up. Most of the other lounges operate in their home base. So like KLM has a flagship lounge. And then what ends up happening with a lot of these airlines is if they have a flight

out of an international destination, they might not have their own lounge. They might contract with some lounge at the airport. That leaves a lot of independent lounges. So the networks I found were Plaza Premium was probably one of the biggest.

and then Escape and the Club. Are there other big networks of lounges outside of airlines that actually operate the lounge as opposed to Priority Pass or those things, which is kind of more of a group of access? I think you'll find that there are a few companies that tend to operate lounges on behalf of airlines, but they won't put their branding on it. So for example, Plaza Premium operates lounges for a number of airlines and things like that around the world.

The club operates the Chase Sapphire Lounges, for example. But a lot of times they won't make that really well known. The Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse, a lot of them are operated by Plaza Premium. And you can actually get into those with Plaza Premium. If you have a car that offers Plaza Premium access, you can get into a Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse.

but they don't really do a lot of advertising. It's not very common to buy access to it directly or something like that. So it's not the same as like a priority pass, but there are definitely networks of companies out there that will operate lounges on behalf of airlines. Yeah. And for the most part, I've found that

There's no reason you would buy a membership to a lounge group of operators, not Priority Pass, which we're about to get to. You're not going to buy a AirPass lounge or something like that unless you live in a city where I guess there's one lounge that's completely unaffiliated and you're going there all the time. Maybe that could make sense. Beyond that, we talked about credit cards briefly. There are credit card company lounges. I think Amex has the biggest footprint. I think they have...

close to 25, 15 in the US and 10 international. Tried to write down all these numbers in advance, but some of my numbers were self-checked and some of them were chat GPT checked. So I had to do some revising when I asked how many Capital One lounges are there? And they said, there's one open. And I was like, that's wrong. Because Capital One I think has like six open.

And they're opening them in all the kind of places you'd expect, the hubs and the major cities that you'd fly in and out of around the country. And then, like you said, Chase has launched some lounges with the club, which is actually interesting when we think about how to access them, because if you have Priority Pass, you can go to all the Chase lounges. Once per year. Okay, so one per year.

That's interesting. I didn't know that. I was just looking it up and I went into Capital One app and I was like, can I go to the Chase Lounge in Boston? Yeah. I was like, yes, you can. Once. Only once. That's actually a good way to, you know, if you have a lot of cars that offer priority pass, before I would just request one and that's the one I use. I don't even bother requesting the other ones. But for this one specific use case, you can use your multiple priority passes to get multiple entries into the Chase FI lounges. I like that. Okay. Let's go.

Let's see other groups of lounges before we talk about how to get into them.

I know that all the alliances, there are a handful of lounges in major cities. I don't think I've ever been to a Star Alliance Sky Team lounge, but I know they exist. I've been to some. Okay. And then there are some airports that just operate their own lounges. There are so many lounges out there that are just like VIP salon. They might be operated by the airport. They might not be. And then there's USO lounges. So if you're an active duty military, there's 250 lounges around the world that you can access.

I am not active duty military. I've never been in a USO lounge. I feel like for the bucket list, like it would be fun to just see one one time, but that's another really big network of lounges.

If you have access to that and sometimes pre-security, I guess we didn't talk about it, but most of the lounges that I've been to are after going through security. I feel like they used to be some pre-security, but I haven't seen that many recently. There are some, but I think as airports renovate and they add more space post-security, more and more lounges are moving there. It's easier for people. They don't have to plan time to go through security and things like that. But there are still some pre-security ones, just not as many these days. Okay. Yeah.

So when you think about all these lounges and the categories, the independent ones, the credit card ones, the airline ones, how do you stack rank them? Is it consistent that certain groupings of lounge types are better than others? I'll start from the bottom. How about that?

I think on average, the airport run ones tend to be a little bit worse. You know what? I'll skip the niceties. They're a lot worse. They tend to be pretty basic. They tend to be just a little room sometimes. Even domestically, there are some airports that run their own lounges and they're nothing special. But if you think about it, it makes sense because...

Airports tend to just take whatever extra space they have and say, Hey, how do I generate revenue from this? And in those cases, you as a traveler are not the customer, right? The airlines that might pay a little bit for their premium passengers to use that lounge. They're the customer.

It's usually airports that aren't big enough where airlines will want to operate their own lounges. So obviously, if an airport is trying to lease out space, the best way is to lease it out to an airline or even to a restaurant, things like that. But if it's not big enough to support that, they'll just run their own really basic lounge, offer some soft drinks, and that's about it, right? Yeah.

And then try to pressure the airlines that say, hey, you don't have a lounge here. If your travelers are traveling in business class, you really need to give them access to a lounge. So you should just pay us. And they end up doing it, even though the lounge isn't all that great. That's the first tier. Right. And then I think a lot of the airline run lounges, I would say there's two types of airline run lounges. One is the top tier carrier that...

actually cares about the product and cares about the customer experience a lot. Think about airlines like Qatar or Cathay Pacific, right? Those lounges tend to be pretty good. But then there's another tier of airline lounges where the airline maybe doesn't care about the customer experience quite so much.

And, you know, they offer it as an amenity just because they feel like they have to or something like that, or they might even operate it as a revenue driver. So, for example, there are some places where airlines operate lounges that they don't even fly out of, but they do it because they want the revenue from Priority Pass or from other airlines paying them. One example that I just thought of off the top of my head is Turkish Airlines has two lounges in Miami.

One of them makes sense. It's where the Turkish flights fly from. One of them is in a terminal that Turkish does not fly from at all. And the only purpose of it is to be a priority pass lounge. Now, Turkish landers tend to be pretty decent, but there's a lot of other airlines that don't care as much. The China Air Lounge at SFO sucks. Exactly. Like those, right? China Airlines, China Southern has a lot of lounges. Even Air France, which is generally a pretty decent airline. They're older. They're really built for priority pass. And they're just...

not fantastic lounges, right? That's a tier I would put next. The airlines that maybe don't care quite as much. And then above that, I would say are the airline membership clubs, United Club, Admirals Club, Delta Sky Club. We talked about that a little bit earlier.

I think it's kind of the middle tier there. They're not usually fantastic, but they're predictable. But the reason I rank that above the other tier is that there's one thing special about these lounges, and that is their agents tend to be pretty fantastic. So if something goes wrong with your flight...

something happens, there's erupts, there's weather, there's mechanical issue with the plane or something like that. That is the first place I will go. I don't bother calling on the phone. I will go straight to the airline's lounge. I don't line up at the gate agent or anything like that. They're usually very friendly, very able to help you out, even bend the rules a little bit sometimes. So I think that's a huge, huge benefit of those lounges. And that's why I put them in the middle.

This episode is brought to you by Viore. Now, there are only a few brands I use almost every single day, and Viore is definitely one of them. They make performance apparel that's incredibly versatile, yet so comfortable. Everything is designed to work out in, but doesn't look or feel like it at all.

My personal favorites are the Sunday Performance Joggers and the Stratotech tees and polos, but you also have to check out their Dream Knit collection. It's so amazing, super soft, lightweight, and moisture-wicking. You can wear Viore for just about any activity, whether it's running, training, yoga, but it's also great for lounging, running around town, and seriously, I wear their MetaPants and Stratotech polos out for a nice dinner all the time.

But Viore isn't just for men. My wife is as obsessed with them as I am, and we both would agree that Viore is definitely an investment in your happiness. And for our listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase, plus free shipping on U.S. orders over $75 and free returns.

So get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at allthehacks.com slash Viore. That's V-U-O-R-I. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash Viore, V-U-O-R-I, to discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

This episode is brought to you by Upwork. We all know that working at a small business means you wear so many hats. I probably have at least a dozen on right now, but sometimes what you need is an extra pair of hands. And Upwork is one of the best places that good companies find great and trusted freelance talent.

With more than two decades of experience, they've pioneered a better way of working, helping businesses scale by connecting them with the top flexible freelance talent in IT, web dev, AI, design, admin support, marketing, you name it. The best part, it is incredibly easy to get started. You can register for free, browse freelancer profiles, and even get help drafting a job post or booking a consultation. Upwork makes the entire process easier, simpler, and more affordable with industry-low fees.

Post a job today and hire tomorrow with Upwork. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com.

The one thing they can do, which you won't get if you call, is they can call every individual gate. So if there's something about your flight, your seat assignment, something that can only be done by a gate agent,

In the lounge, they can call that gate agent and get it done with much quicker ability than waiting in the line at that gate. I would argue that if you're at the gate and there's a line of 10 people and the thing you need can only be done by the gate agent, if you went into the United Club, they could call that gate agent who's going to say, hold on, pick up the phone and probably take care of that problem. And they all know each other, of course, right? They'll be like, oh, let me call my buddy Susan at the gate or something like that. And they'll get it done. Yeah. So I think that's a great benefit. I

have memberships that people pay an annual fee for, there's like a minimum bar. Like we have to be at least good enough. Predictable, right? Yeah. Okay. And what's above that? The credit card lounges that you mentioned are this Amex Centurion Lounge, the Sapphire Lounge, and the Capital One Lounge.

Those tend to be a little bit more premium. They usually have a little bit better food, better bar, a little bit nicer amenities and fixtures and things like that. Amex really revolutionized the game. It's probably been 10 years now or something like that. When they came out with the first Centurion Lounge, it blew everyone's mind. It was so much better than every other lounge.

That's started to change a little bit. It's not quite as nice as it used to be 10 years ago, but there's a lot more of them. And I think that's a benefit. And they've inspired a lot of competition. Oh, yeah. So if they didn't do that, Chase and Capital One wouldn't have been doing what they're doing. And probably those domestic lounges from United and American and Delta, they probably wouldn't be competing either. Absolutely. 100%. Thank you, Amex. I think between those three, I would put...

Chase Sapphire as the best, and then followed by Capital One and then Amex Centurion Lounge. I haven't been to an official Chase Lounge. It needs to happen. Yeah, I think they're nice. They tend to have pretty good food. They have pretty nice fixtures. The wait time can be a problem sometimes, but that's true for all of the lounges. A great hack for this. I do know for Capital One, there's often a wait list. And the same thing is true for

Centurion. You see all these people lined up. Then you're like, oh, finally, I'm next. And they're like, no, we're not letting you in. We're just taking your name to put you on a waitlist and we'll text you later when you can come in. I don't know about Chase. Amex had something that makes me think maybe you can, but in some of these cases, you can put yourself on the waitlist before you get there. So we were flying through Denver the other day. I opened up the Capital One app.

The second we touched down on the ground and it said we have 15 minute wait and I could add myself to the waitlist now so that by the time we actually got there, we'd already cleared the waitlist and you've got a 10 minute buffer to show up. Yeah, I think Chase, you can't do it. You have to be there in person. Capital One, as you mentioned, you can do it. I do that all the time, by the way. It's great. Amex, they have an indication of how busy it is in the app and you can do mobile check in, but that actually does not get you on the waitlist. That's just to get you access to the lounge.

So they'll give you a QR code. You can scan that QR code to get in. It expedites it a little bit. You don't have to show your card, but that doesn't save you a spot, unfortunately. I have not tested this, nor am I going to approve it. But when you get on the wait list,

for a Centurion lounge, they send you a text that says, you're off the wait list, come over. And when you get to the desk, every time I've gone, the person who's checking if you're off the wait list, isn't the person checking you into the lounge. Every time I've been, they just say like, can you show that you got the text? Their confirmation wasn't confirming me and my name. It was me showing them the text. So I'm half convinced if you just like keep that text in your text and go up to the lounge and say, hey, I got my text. I think it would work at least some percentage of the time.

But if it doesn't work, I don't know how much they're going to be excited to put you on the wait list again. I've never tried that. It might work. Who knows? I do know that for Capital One, at least when I've tried it in the past, that does not work. Because once you get to the front, they'll ask you your name and check that you're on the list. At least at Denver and Dallas, both of those will do the same thing. Okay. Is there anything higher than those lounges?

So I think above that, then we get to the premium airline lounges. Like you're talking about the Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge in Hong Kong. You're talking about Qatar in Doha. You're talking about Emirates in Dubai. Like those lounges are the next level experiences, right? They'll have like spas. They have sit down restaurants. They have really premium offerings that none of the other lounges really offer. So

Those are the lounges where if I have access to it, I will go to the airport early. I've had really good meals in some of those lounges. Oh, yeah, absolutely. This is not like airport takeout level food. This is caviar and steak and made to order stuff. One thing we didn't mention was I think a new trend in the last few years is all of the domestic lounges started building these fancier lounges. American has the flagship first lounge. United has the Polaris lounge. Delta has a Delta One lounge.

And so those we'll talk about access, but they are, I would say on par with not the world-class best lounges, but they're way better than all the others. I think they're better than a Centurion lounge, better than Capital One lounge. But when we talk about access, your United Club membership doesn't get you in to the United Players lounge and your American Admirals Club membership does not get you into the flagship first lounge.

Above all of those lounges, there are a few edge cases like the Lufthansa first class terminal. Yeah. Which. The experiences I call them. I don't even know if you call it a lounge because it's a whole private terminal. If you're flying first class on Lufthansa in Frankfurt, known for rubber ducks. If someone has collected Lufthansa ducks, they've spent a lot of time in the first class terminal. I have not done that. I'm guessing you maybe have. I have.

Pro tip though, the same rubber ducks can be found in the regular first class landers in the main terminal. So if you don't have time to go to the first class terminal, you can go there. But the first class terminal is pretty cool. It's really meant for people departing Frankfurt, but you can still go. Even if you're on a connecting, you just have to exit the airport, walk to the first class terminal yourself, which kind of sucks, but it's worth it for the experience because then they'll drive you straight to your plane. And at least in my case, they were like, Oh, would you like the board first or last?

Yeah. I said last. So they waited until everyone boarded, put me on the car and I drove there and I was the last one to board and they closed the door and we left. It's such a great experience. They've got sleeping rooms there. They've got showers. They've had the famous rubber ducks. They have a sit down restaurant with pretty good food. You don't feel like you're in airport.

Premium suites at LAX is similar, but it's going to cost you thousands of dollars. We talked about this a little with Lee Rowan, who introduced us, actually, when we talked about getting through airport security, because these first-class terminals are a great way to get through airport security. They're an expensive way. They're an expensive way. Yeah, great, but expensive. So that's lounges. Let's talk about how to get into these lounges. We talked about having a membership. For most of the domestic carriers, probably a few international, I know Qantas and Air Canada sell memberships.

But outside of that, most of these are not memberships through the lounge as much as they are memberships either through Priority Pass, which is probably one of the biggest. So let's talk about that. Priority Pass, it's the membership that everyone seems to have. And the quality of Priority Pass lounges is just so variable. So Priority Pass is essentially a network of lounges independently owned. So Priority Pass itself doesn't tend to run them. There isn't like a Priority Pass branded lounge.

But they'll work with local lounge partners, sometimes even airline lounges, and you can show your membership card and get access to it. Now, Priority Pass has actually changed quite a lot over the years. It used to be back in the day that any Priority Pass issued through a credit card could get you to basically any Priority Pass lounge. And then they started adding restaurants and spas and other experiences.

And then over time, credit card companies start taking away those experiences. So Amex was the first one to remove it. So you can't use Amex cards priority pass for restaurants anymore. Chase removed it recently to Capital One removed it on most of their cards recently. There's very few cards now that will get you into priority press restaurants and spas. But sometimes those are my favorite ones to go to.

Yeah, there was a heyday where two or three of the restaurants at SFO were totally covered and some of the cards had unlimited guests and you'd take four friends to a restaurant, spend $100 and it'd be totally free. Yeah, there's still four. There's four restaurants at SFO. I go there all the time. I'm lucky enough to still have a card that offers it, but most of my friends don't anymore. So I'll be like guessing them in and things like that.

But my favorite example back in the day was Portland. It's called Capers, if you guys remember that from back in the day. Capers Market is basically a supermarket in an airport. So every time somebody would leave or come back from Portland, they would just do their grocery shopping in the airport and get it covered with a priority pass. It was incredible.

At the very beginning of it, they were allowing some crazy things. They would let you buy alcohol. So people were bringing back bottles of wine. They would let you guess each other. So like I would guess you and you would guess me and we'd both get $54 or whatever it is in credit. Most of that's come to an end now. I think Priority Pass probably cracked down on it a little bit and sent out a memo to the line just saying, hey, don't do this.

But it's interesting. At the core, it actually makes sense because what they do is that every time you swipe into a Priority Pass lounge, they just pay the lounge a certain amount. The credit card company. Through Priority Pass. So they thought, hey, if you're going to pay the lounge, why don't we just pay a restaurant and do the exact same thing?

So the way it works is that you just get a bill credit of $20 to $30, depending. It depends a little bit on the country, foreign exchange and things like that. It'll be a little bit different. But you get a credit and you can use that for whatever you want at the restaurant. And it makes a lot of sense on the surface because they still get paid, right? And if you're going to pay a lounge, what's the difference with paying a restaurant?

I think what people started abusing and why they started walking it back a little bit is that if you go to a lounge, you normally swipe in once to a lounge, right? And you'll stay there before your flight, unless you do some crazy lounge hopping or something like that. But for restaurants, people are going to like four restaurants in one trip, just getting takeout food from each one and walking onto the plane with them having a feast. And I've done that a lot too. So I'm part of the problem.

but it just wasn't sustainable. Or they'd go to a restaurant, have a meal, and then go to the lounge to relax. Yeah, that too. And the lounge loved it because they're like, oh, we're getting all these people that aren't even eating. True. But yeah, and so you could go to Priority Pass and actually buy a membership. You can. I would not recommend it.

at all. I think it's like 350 bucks gets you 10 access visits and then 475 bucks or something gets you a year unlimited. But we'll go through the list when we talk about credit cards. Probably most people listening have at least one that includes unlimited or some limited number of visits to Priority Pass. And so unfortunately, most people don't activate it. I meet tons of friends who are like, oh, I want to go to this lounge. Like, oh, do you have one of these cards? Yeah, I have one of these cards. Well, did you activate your Priority Pass? No. No.

I don't know if they've changed because I haven't done it in a while, but it used to be like you had to wait for the card to come in the mail. But some of them you might be able to activate online in the moment and get in. But the number of people I've seen arguing at a Priority Pass lounge, like, I have a card. This should get me in. Can you call them? And they're like, if you don't have your Priority Pass, you can't come in. So Priority Pass is probably the biggest network. They've got something like 1,700 lounges in the network, 1,400 lounges worldwide.

most airports have something. And so that's probably the biggest way to get in is to have a Priority Pass membership. And that'll come from credit cards, which we'll talk about. I don't know if you know the difference because there's Priority Pass and then there's LoungeKey.

And then there's a Dragon Pass. They're kind of all the same thing. Very similar. And I actually think at least two or three of them are owned by the same company, Collinson. I think LoungeKey and Priority Pass are definitely the same company. In the US, it's very Priority Pass centric. In Asia, Dragon Pass tends to be a little bit more prevalent. So there's not really a downside in...

being a member of more than one alliance or group. So a lot of them just tend to accept both priority pass, dragon pass, whatever, but they're technically different networks. Okay. So another big way to get in that we haven't talked about and probably the oldest way and the way that all these were intended was just if you're flying on a business class or first class ticket, you get to get into the lounge. And you mentioned that the domestic airlines kind of rewound

ruined that for Americans. And you're like, I just bought this expensive first class ticket. Why can't I go into the lounge? And they say, well, sorry, like it's only for international flights. Or in some cases, the transcon flights, LA and SF to New York are often excluded from that list as they competed for that route. But if you're flying internationally in business class or first class, is there a circumstance where you don't get access to the lounge if there is one?

There's a few. Generally, you would. But some airlines have started selling these almost like basic economy business class fares that exclude lounge access, which is crazy to me, right? Because that's probably the cheapest part of the experience. You know, if you think about how much space a business class seat takes up on the plane, that's expensive to provide. But yeah, some airlines have started selling unbundled business class fares that don't include lounge access.

I'm guessing if you're on a super discount business class airline like Zip Air, you're definitely not getting free lounge access either. But if you're on a major carrier buying a normal price business class ticket, Lufthansa, Air France, United, flying internationally,

You don't need to worry about whether you have a membership, whether you have your priority pass. Almost every time I've been in that circumstance, I'm getting access to a lounge. Now, is it the nicest lounge? Not always. There have been cases where I have access to a lounge from a business class flight, almost always a miles flight. You don't have to pay with dollars for your flight in business to get access to the lounge, but that's

But that doesn't mean you might not prefer going to a lounge in Priority Pass or Relink to a credit card. That's the thing. They will usually tell you which lounge to go to. They'll either give you an invitation or they might write it on your boarding pass. But that's the lounge they want you to go to. That's not necessarily the lounge you want to go to. And the thing with all these alliances is that usually you can go across alliances.

If you're flying United, they might send you to the United Club. But there might be another lounge at the same airport from the same alliance that you could go to instead. Swiss Air, Lufthansa. Or even a Star Alliance. You talked about the alliance lounges themselves. Star Alliance has a lounge, right? You could go there. But a lot of times I've even seen cases where the airline will contract with a third party lounge, either a priority pass lounge or an airport lounge. And.

And it is far inferior to the lounges you could actually get to if you just went to a lounge operated by an alliance carrier. Meaning your boarding pass gives you access to better lounges than the one they suggest. Yeah. You don't need another membership. Yeah, absolutely. Wow.

But they don't want you to know about it. I don't know why. Maybe because the gate that they operate from is a little bit further, or maybe they have to pay a little bit less money to send you to that lounge. But for whatever reason, they don't actually tell you about the good lounges. Yeah, that's a great one.

This episode is brought to you by Green Chef. Spring is here and it is the perfect time to refresh your eating routine with healthy dietitian approved recipes, but only if they actually taste good. Fortunately, we've been eating Green Chef for over a year, so I can confidently say they're delicious and always have recipes that feature fresh, organic, seasonal produce and responsibly sourced proteins.

I really do love green chef because they make it so easy to spend less time in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean you're eating the same thing every week because they have 80 plus weekly options. So it's easy to find meals that fit your taste and lifestyle, whether that's Mediterranean flavors, gluten-free plant-based heavy protein, there is something for everyone. And if you're really busy and want to save time, they have salads and heat and eat meals that are both ready in five minutes or less.

Plus, with week-to-week flexibility, you can adjust your plan any time to fit your schedule. Make this spring your most delicious yet with Green Chef. Head to allthehacks.com slash greenchef and use the code 50ALLTHEHACKS to get 50% off your first month. Then 20% off for two months with free shipping. That's code 50ALLTHEHACKS at allthehacks.com slash greenchef.

This episode is brought to you by Gelt. When it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy. And as tax time gets closer, getting prepared is so important. And now that I'm working with Gelt, I finally feel like I have a partner I can trust to handle everything for my personal and business taxes.

Think of Gelt as the ultimate modern CPA. Of course, they have an in-house team of expert CPAs to work with who help you determine the most effective tax strategies to minimize your risk and grow your wealth. But they also have an amazing tech platform that gives you personalized guidance to maximize deductions, tax credits, and savings, and

There's also an amazing document vault where you can upload all your files, tag them with relevant years, and even see when your tax team has reviewed each file. Beyond that, the tax library you get access to has dozens of in-depth guides on things like choosing retirement plans, taxes for new parents, qualified business income or QBI, and so much more.

So if you're ready for a more premium, proactive tax strategy to optimize and file your taxes, you have to check out Gelt. And as an All The Hacks listener, you can skip the wait list. Just head to allthehacks.com slash Gelt, G-E-L-T. Again, that's allthehacks.com slash G-E-L-T to stop overpaying on taxes.

I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners. You can go to all the hacks.com slash deals. So please consider supporting those who support us elite status. Cause I think we're going to spend a little bit of time here is the other one. And again,

traveling internationally, even with some of the more basic, not the best status on every airline, you get access to lounges even when you're flying economy. Yep. I think Ali's status is really powerful. As a general rule, One World, I think, does it the best. Their rule is pretty simple. If you're flying any cabin and you are One World Emerald, you get access to the first class lounges. For people who aren't familiar, most of the airlines in the U.S. have four tiers of status.

And they all have different names, but we'll call them like silver, gold, platinum, and elite. At what level do you need status usually to get into these lounges? It usually tends to be the second tier for a basic business class lounge. One world goes above and beyond this, and they let their top tier or second to top tier. They get first class lounges. Okay. Because I'm not a one world. So there's Sapphire and Emerald. Yeah, Sapphire and Emerald. And so if I were like...

gold, maybe gold's the lowest. Platinum on American, that's the second tier. That's Sapphire, yep. And I could still go to a lounge in an economy ticket. You can go to business class lounges. That actually includes the flagship lounges, which is pretty major. So American Airlines flagship lounges, they're their business class lounge, but it's their most premium lounge. And you can go there with just platinum status, which is not that hard to get, actually. We've talked a lot about fast tracking status and spending money and earning loyalty points and all that.

Okay, so that's if you have status on these alliances. I've done this flying international in Star Alliance when I had United status. We could go to the lounges flying economy. Obviously, most of this doesn't matter if you're using your points and miles to fly business because you would have already had status. I just did this episode on rethinking elite status. And the reason I had stopped caring about status was that I just often am using points and miles to fly in business class. So if you're flying in business, status doesn't do a lot for you.

Where it gets real fun is if you can get status on an airline that isn't in the U.S., right? Because the way I understand it, if I have status on Star Alliance or One World based in an airline that's not in the U.S., well, then my flight in the U.S. is an international flight.

And therefore, I should be able to go to the Admirals Club or the United Club when I'm flying domestic economy within the U.S. Yeah. And this is where the alliances have slight differences in their rules. But usually all of these exclusions that we're talking about are only for U.S. domestic flights using U.S. domestic status. So if I have British Airways gold status, which is their emerald tier, then

I can use any lounge I want, any Admiral's Club, any flagship lounge I want in the US. I had British Airways Gold for a while. It's a pretty popular one to get. And it was great because you were treated super well. And it was basically like you're flying first class, even in economy. Now I have Japan Airlines Global Club, which is essentially lifetime Sapphire status. So I can use any Admiral's Club or flagship lounge I want there as well. And...

Star Alliance does a very similar thing, but theirs is actually a little bit different because if you have Star Alliance from another carrier, let's say Lufthansa, you can use any United Club. But their exclusion only applies not just to lounges in the U.S., but only to United Clubs in the U.S. So that means if you are a United Elite, gold or above, you can actually go to any lounge in the U.S. that's not branded a United Club. So that includes Air Canada, which is...

a big plus in San Francisco here because we have a great Air Canada maple leaf lounge. Any United Gold or above, even on a domestic ticket, can go there. Interesting. So let's assume I had United Gold.

and I was flying economy, I could still go to a Star Alliance lounge as long as it's not the United Club. Correct. Interesting. But there was one crazy promotion one year where it was credit one international flight to Aegean Air, which is a Greek airline in Star Alliance, and you would get their status for like three years. So I did this. And so for three years, I had Star Alliance Gold through Aegean Air. So all my domestic flights, I could go into the lounge.

Now, I don't know how this has evolved. Back then, I remember, and history's a little blurry, I think I put my Aegean number...

on the flight so that I could get into the lounge. So I would no longer be earning United miles. And then at the gate, I'd be like, hey, could I change my number from Aegean to United? Do you still have to go through all those hoops or could you just show your Aegean membership? By policy, actually, for a lot of them, specifically for United clubs and Admirals clubs, you can actually just show your card, give them a membership number. They'll manually type it in.

But I think it's starting to change a little bit. More and more agents are starting to just want you to scan it. And if it lets you in, they let you in. And if it doesn't. Meaning, and we'll talk about status matching, but if you had status on an international carrier that let you go to all the lounges domestically, you're probably not, though maybe we could make a case you should. Like if you're an American flyer, you probably credit your miles to American.

Now, if you go do some status match and get British Airways status so you can go to the Admirals Club for free when you're flying on economy. Great. But you'd have to potentially put in your British Airways number and earn British Airways points instead of American. Yeah, it used to be a lot easier not to have to do that. As you know, you could change it later if you can find someone willing to do it. But I will say the one airline that has never made an exception for me for this is Alaska.

Alaska will want to see your frequent flyer number on the reservation before they let you in. So I've never had success getting Alaska just type in a frequent flyer number for me. And the reason is because Alaska lounges have the pancake machine and they're trying to keep the pancake machine safeguarded. Yeah, that must be it. But one trick I've learned from people is if you're trying to employ this strategy at every website that you have in a mileage account, you've got your profile.

A lot of people I know create a profile for themselves as a travel companion. So, you know, I've got my Chris profile on United. I have my wife's profile and then I create another Chris profile. And that other Chris profile isn't required to book a flight with my United number. So if I had status in another airline, I'd be able to do that. And it's most come up as I've been trying to think about the I'm flying Alaska a lot.

Earning American status is a lot easier than earning Alaska status. What route do I want to play? Further complicated by the fact that most of my flights were in January and February, where American status cycle is from March 1st on. Even if I credit those flights to American, it wouldn't have helped. So it's a little bit of a sticky situation. But I would say one thing someone mentioned was

Like on the website, you can't do it. And I don't remember if it was American or Alaska, but in the mobile app, you could. So they were like, if you want to change your frequent flyer number on Alaska, you could do it in the mobile app. So you got to play around. But if you have status on an airline and especially an international one, you might be able to game some of these systems. What you said about creating another profile. I do that all the time. I highly recommend everyone do that. Essentially, you're just booking a flight for somebody else who happens to be named Kevin Song. Right.

I'm just booking it for my twin brother who happens to have the same name, right? There's nothing wrong with that, but it does let you leave the frequent flyer number blank. And that's the key part. And then you can add it in yourself later. Otherwise, you have to find someone to try and change the number. And then usually you have to contact them to do that. And it's a huge mess. So it's just a lot cleaner, a lot nicer if you just leave a blank. That does mean, though, you will have to manually enter your known traveler number to get TSA PreCheck.

And I do it so often that I added it as one of those text replacements in Mac OS. So if I type that, it just auto fills my global entry number in there for me. And you will have to make sure that you remember to put a number in there. Now, yes, you can claim miles after flying, but if you don't put your United number in, you're never going to earn any points for flying. So keep that in mind. Talk about status matching, because I have not thought about this in years, but there are a lot of times where it's pretty easy.

Yeah, I feel like status matching, it was a big thing 10 years ago, but it's just become such a large thing now. Every few months, we see a great status match offer from one of the airlines. Every time a new airline revamps a loyalty program. Or they mess one up. Or they mess one up. Southwest messes theirs up, and then American says, hey,

Yeah, that's right. I just status match to American, but I haven't done it internationally for years. When British Airways changed the way they do status qualification, I think a lot of the European carriers were like, hey, here's a status match. Come join us instead. And

And that's gotten pretty popular. Usually it's something like you have to show proof that you had status somewhere else. You may or may not have to pay a fee, a small fee to do that status match. And then usually it's a challenge where they'll say, hey, fly once with us in the next X number of months and we'll extend your status for a year.

Or sometimes it's a lot more like United has pretty robust status challenges that are available year round, but you have to fly a decent amount for them. When I moved from Chicago to San Francisco, I took advantage of the United status match. And at the time it wasn't published, it's still not published. And I know they're still doing it, but they're matching all the way to 1K. So I came from executive platinum on American Airlines when I lived in Chicago, I matched a 1K and I've been a 1K ever since. Yeah.

But you've renewed it through flying or credit cards. So it worked. That's the target demographic that they want. Yeah. They want people who are going to move over and stay with them, credit a lot of flights, spend a lot of money. And I've unfortunately done that. Being an SFO, United has the best schedule of any airline being a hub. So unfortunately, I've spent much more than I care to admit flying United.

Yes. So one of the strategies I've used in the past is if you're going on a big international trip, and I would say this is probably earlier in your miles and points journey, right? Earlier in the journey, I wasn't even thinking about business class. I was like, I just got enough points to take a trip internationally. Why would I use twice as many points to go in business class? Who cares? Like, I want to take two trips. It didn't matter. So it was like, how do I get into lounges? How do I get this better experience? How do I pick the seats, get the free bags, all that?

And there's a lot of international airlines where you can status match. And maybe they'll only give you status for three months until you fly on them. But if you're going to take one trip and you're going to Greece, well, if you have a GN status for three months, that's all you need. And so there are a couple times where I would status match to an airline and they'd immediately give you the status for three months.

And I would use it in those three months to get a lot of benefits. And then I would never take that flight. I would never credit it. I would never get any perks, never get any benefits beyond that. But it made that one trip a lot more enjoyable. So I know this is not international, but I did that with Alaska Airlines back in the day. I wanted to go to Hawaii for my honeymoon. So I status matched to Alaska MVP, 75K, whatever they call it. At least back in the day, I don't know if they still do. They gave you the upgrades that came with it. So

So I applied those upgrades. I flew to Hawaii in first class. I combined it with the credit card companion fare. So I got two tickets to Hawaii for my honeymoon for dirt cheap in first class. It was great. So they still do that because I did the built status match to Alaska last year. Oh, okay. And they gave me four upgrade certificates and I've used all four of them. And in fact, I

I found them so easy to use that I've started realizing there are a lot of people that don't use them because they get upgraded on their own. And so if you find the right parts of the internet, there are places to get Alaska upgrade certificates for a price that is very reasonable, like 50 bucks an upgrade certificate kind of thing.

But the funny thing is I did that last year, but I didn't fly Alaska that much. This year, I realized we're going to basically only places the whole year. Every trip we're taking is to a place Alaska flies for less than United is charging. And so I think I might even get status on my own on Alaska. And then I got the Alaska card to kind of help boost it to that next level where you get a lot more of the benefits and the perks. So I'm going for MVP gold, which I just think is funny because last year I had MVP gold. I didn't use it at all. Now I'm trying to get it

because I want to use it.

what will probably happen is I'll get it. And just as I get it, it'll be the end of the year. And then next year I'll be like, Oh, we're only flying Delta. So we'll see how that goes. But I do think one other important thing is there's some rule for every airline about how often you can do this. And for some airlines it's, Oh, you can only do this every two years. I don't remember which airline, but there's one airline that you can only do it once in your life. And that one I've always been, I can't, whatever airline it is. I just, every time I see the terms, it's like, you can only status match one time in your life. And I'm like, Oh, I'm not gonna do it this time. Oh,

A lot of airlines actually say that, but it's not always enforced. I can't remember how many years you can do it. I really wish I knew that at the beginning of this year when I had all these flights that would have helped me get through that challenge. I will say the one airline that is more generous with it is Southwest. So Southwest lets you do it every year. And in fact, I just did my match a few weeks ago. I'm flying Southwest to Austin and I'm

I actually think Southwest A-list is pretty nice because it means that no matter what, you can board either during A if you have an A boarding pass or right after A. So, you know, I did a same day change today to get onto a later flight and it meant that I paid less, did the same day change, and I still get to maintain my A boarding group. Now, obviously all that is changing pretty soon with Southwest crazy program changes and everything. I

At least, you know, with A-list, I'll get a free bag and I can choose my seat and things like that. But there are big things that you can do it every single year, which is crazy, unheard of. But it does have a challenge component, right? It does. Yeah, you have to do six one ways. I plan on flying Southwest enough in the next 12 months that I am going to fly and mileage run to get those six. I have a few organic ones sprinkled in. So I think I'm doing four already organically. And I'm just going to do a round trip to Vegas for fun to get the last two to meet that.

Since this is all the hacks, some of them it's per segment. Some of them it's per flight. One fun trick is if you are trying to do any of these things and there's a, you must have three segments or six segments. We've probably both been in a circumstance where we're like, oh, so I can qualify with segments. Great. I'm going to fly from SF to Vegas, but I'm going to do it via LA and Seattle and Portland and take this ridiculous five flight trip that saves me having to do five different trips.

Unfortunately, Southwest is by flight. So if you have a connecting flight, it counts as one. No help there. No, but United, I often do that because their elite qualification is you can spend a certain amount of money, but if you fly a certain number of flights, the amount of money they have to spend is lower. So United lets you do a same day change and add a connection and things like that. You don't have to maintain the same routing. So at the end of last year, I was trying to requalify for status and I was like,

I have the dollars, so it'd be a huge shame if I didn't make it just because I didn't have enough flights. So I just booked a bunch of SFO LAX and started changing them all over the place. I went to Fresno a bunch, connected through Fresno. I connected through San Diego. There's ways you can change it. United used to be very generous. You used to be able to keep on adding segments, more and more segments. Like you start with the SFO LAX and then you end up with an SFO San Diego, Las Vegas, Chicago, some other city, like

Just keep on adding segments because as you would finish one segment, it would give you same day change options for the next segment.

I haven't been able to do that recently. I think they cracked down on it a little bit, but it used to be really fun to try and add as many as you could into one reservation. The only other thing we didn't talk... So status matching is great for international, especially when you're economy. We didn't talk about day passes, which I feel like deserve a little bit of a mention, which is just that day passes are something that I think you get with some United cards. Some people sell them, but...

Honestly, I've never bought a day pass for a lounge. And just this past weekend, we were going to the United Club and there was a sign that said day pass is not accepted today. And the other United Club at Denver was under construction. So it was like, if you had a day pass and you're hoping to use it, today's not your day. Are day passes something that you pretty much always encourage people to avoid? I think it's one of those cases where if you have it and you can use it, that's great, but don't rely on it.

More and more airlines are restricting the usage of day passes. United, for example, just announced that day passes can only be used during three hours before your flight. And you have to be with the cardholder that the day pass is issued to. You can't transfer them and you can't give it to a friend. None of that anymore. But if you can use it, sure. Why not? It gets you in. I remember using one back when I was first getting started in miles and points. I

I actually was on a flight that got diverted to Cleveland from Newark to Chicago. This is, if you remember, many years ago, somebody set fire to the ATC facility in Chicago. Turns out it was a disgruntled employee. So the FAA shut down all the airspace around Chicago. So I got diverted to Cleveland. I was at midair at the time. And I was like, hey, I have this day pass for my Explorer card. So I went to the United Club in Cleveland. They got me rebooked. And that was actually a pretty good use of it.

But it is getting harder and harder to use for sure. It's just you can't rely on it. Sometimes you can go, sometimes you can't. I will say, though, at least with United, because I follow them the most, I happen to know, if you go online and you add a day pass to your reservation ahead of time, they actually don't count that as using a day pass. And what I mean by that is if you do that, it bypasses that capacity restriction. You can still get in as if you have a membership.

That's great. Especially Endeavor, it was all automated. You go through the lounge and there was no people. You just scan it. We went up an elevator and it was just a room with an automated gate. They also have an interesting lounge, which I've seen a few pop up.

Capital One has this in the front of the Denver lounge. United has this grab-and-go lounge. I think Delta has one where it's like, if you're really just using this for food, why don't you go to this lounge? And United has a lounge. You walk in and it's just fridges and counters and you just take all the snacks and food and drinks you want, a little barista, and then you leave

And there's no place to really sit or do anything. And it was kind of nice. The United Club Fly is what they call it. I actually love that. If I pass by one, I always make sure and go. Because you can just grab some snacks for your next flight. They do have one staff in there, and it's the barista. So they'll make coffee to order there. They have one in Denver and one in Houston now. And it's a pretty great perk, honestly. But...

Two days ago, they announced that one day passes will no longer get you into the United Club Fly. Oh, wow. So you need a membership now. These day passes are the worst. We got to talk about how to get these memberships. And I think almost every lounge membership I've had or ever will have comes from a credit card. Is that kind of where your lounge admission comes? Other than I know you get in through the Japan Airlines staff.

status. So we'll shelve that. But most of the time you're getting into a lounge from a credit card. Yeah, it tends to be the best way because airlines want to incentivize you to hold the credit card. So they'll price the annual fees for the credit cards actually lower than if you were to just straight up buy a lounge membership directly from the airline. And plus you get all the other perks of the card as well. I tried to write all the credit cards you could have that will get you into a lounge. I'm sure I'm missing some. The main three are

The marquee premium cards from Amex, Chase, and Capital One.

So I think if your goal is to have the widest network of lounges to get into, it's hard to say that there is a card better than Amex Platinum or Business Platinum. I think it depends on what airports you tend to frequent. If you're at an airport that has a Centurion lounge, by all means, yes, absolutely do that. But I would say the flip side of that is that you don't get Priority Pass restaurants and things like that. Then again, most of the other premium cards don't offer that anymore anyway. It's

It's a nice solid card. If you're going to have one card to get lounge access, it's a pretty decent option. Yeah. So I was going through all the options. So Amex, obviously you get into the Amex lounge. One of the things that they've changed, we haven't talked about guest policies, but the biggest annoyance to the Amex Centurion lounge is that a couple of years ago, they started saying no guests.

unless you spend $75,000 on your card, which is a lot of money to spend on a card that earns one point per dollar on everything except flights. And I imagine most people listening aren't spending $75,000 a year on flights. So that is a tough one to stomach. And used to be three authorized users for $325 or $375 a year. I can't remember. And now it's $175 per authorized user. So it's quite expensive. But

But the perk there and why I think the platinum card is the best lounge card is that in addition to Amex's own lounges, in addition to a priority pass membership that includes guests and unlimited visits, you also get access to the Delta Sky Club. That's true. Flying Delta. It is 10 visits a year unless you spend $75,000. You also get escape lounges, which are not actually part of priority pass always. And then

Some of the Plaza premium lounges are not in priority pass, but they are in Amex platinum. And then there's this weird edge case of Lufthansa lounges where you can get access with Amex platinum card. I didn't read all the terms and conditions, but from a partnership standpoint, it's,

On Capital One and on Chase, you usually get their branded lounges and priority pass. And then Capital One, you get these extras. And so I think the only thing you're really missing from an Amex membership for lounges is you're not getting into Capital One. You're not getting into Chase more than once a year. And then, of course, none of them are going to get you in to the lounge of American, Alaska, Delta, or United. So you miss that.

Capital One, similar. You get priority pass, you get Capital One lounges. The upside though, of all the three main premium cards, the Capital One Venture X card is the only one that has free authorized users. And those authorized users get into the Capital One lounge.

So if you want your spouse or your family member or your friend to be able to go to Capital One Lounges, you could just add them as an authorized user to your VentureX card. You could either set a low limit or not even give them the card. I wonder if you could do it through the app. The app will give you a QR code. You can use that to get in. Okay.

I'm all for giving someone access to a free thing, but if I can avoid giving them the actual physical credit card, that's always better. I actually don't know if all of our users get their own login though. That I'm not sure. Okay. So maybe it won't work, but I do know that I got our au pair a couple of years ago was trying to rent a car and I wanted to get her Hertz status. And so I got her a VentureX card. I never gave her the VentureX card, but we were able to activate her Hertz status. So that was one. And then on Chase, I,

the only change there is Chase's Priority Pass, Chase Lounges, and then you also do get Air Canada Lounges. Some Air Canada Lounges, not even all of them. If you're flying on Star Alliance. And then if you have the Centurion card, which is the black Amex, you get unlimited guests for the $1,000 a year fee. And if you have the JP Morgan Reserve card, in addition to being the same as the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you also get a United Club member. That's right. TBD, United changed this week, last week, where United Club is now

three tiers of membership, I guess. Yeah. You've got the base tier for six or 700 bucks that gets you in. You've got this expensive tier for over a thousand dollars that gets you and guests in, which they kind of copied from Delta. And then there's this, if you have the credit card that gets the lounge access, you get one guest, but not two or your immediate family. And so team

TBD, what the JP Morgan reserve card, which tier of membership you'll get. They didn't call out that card specifically. So we'll see. I know. But yeah, the other way to get access to these lounges for the United American Delta is all three of them have a premium card. They're all in the five to $700 price range. I think with the exception of city and American, there's a business and a personal one. I know on Delta and United now.

and that gives you your membership to the club. For the most part, they're pretty generous with guests. You get a couple guests with your membership, United and American. On Delta, I don't think you get guests with the credit card membership. There's a limit on how many times you can use it, actually. Yes. Just like the Amix plan. No guests. And the only perk is if you use it in multiple airports within a 24-hour period, it only counts as one. But I think that if you fly with multiple people, the Delta...

lounge membership is very prohibitive. You can't even buy a membership to Delta unless you have status with Delta. They make it hard. A lot of the Sky Clubs I've been to historically before all these changes were very busy. I get why they do it. Now, if you don't want any of those, you don't want a super high annual fee card. There are some other cards, some that are high annual fee, some that aren't, that include some version of Priority Pass.

So you could tell me if I missed any. And I guess I shouldn't have said no high annual fee because the first few on my list, the Bonvoy Brilliant card, 650, includes Bladum status with Marriott and a bunch of other perks, but it also includes Priority Pass. The Ritz card, I think, includes Priority Pass, which if you can't get it, but you can get a Marriott card with Chase and then upgrade to it,

I think you have to wait a year, though. You do have to wait a year. Yep. Then Bank of America has the Premium Rewards Elite card, which is one of my favorite cards out there. It's our default card nowadays. And that not only has Priority Pass restaurant access, but also one card includes four Priority Pass memberships that do not need to be linked to authorized users.

So if you have a family member and you want to give them a Priority Pass membership, you don't have to even give them a credit card. And so I love that card. I think if you can get to Platinum Honor status with Bank of America, that card is

is the best cashback card out there. - Yeah, the Platinum Honors bonus is actually pretty fantastic. - So we talked about best cashback cards a lot, so I won't beat that down. The MasterCard Black card also includes Priority Pass restaurants and a Priority Pass membership, but the card sucks. So I wouldn't recommend anyone get that card. - Yeah, wouldn't recommend that. - I've never actually seen it in the wild. - You know what, I haven't either. I see people confusing it with the Amex Centurion card,

All the time. I know they picked that name on purpose. Couple other random ones. The UBS visa includes priority pass with restaurants. I don't think it's that compelling of a card. I only know anything about it because there was a short window when I worked at Wealthfront that UBS was acquiring Wealthfront. I did a deep dive on UBS and then they pulled out of the deal. So that didn't happen. The U.S. Bank Altitude Connect and Connect Business.

This is your priority pass option with no fee. So $0 annual fee on the personal card. You only get four visits, but you can use them at restaurants. And if you still have the altitude reserve, which is not available anymore, I think you get 10 visits on that one and you can use it at restaurants. And in a city prestige, which I don't have. I do have that one. And that one's pretty great because you get restaurant access and it's unlimited. Unlimited guests or unlimited visits? Unlimited visits. Terms say two guests, but I've guessed it more and they haven't charged me.

But the problem with that is can't get it anymore, unfortunately. Yep. And I don't even think you can product change it. No, you can't. Yeah. So unless you currently have one, you can't get one. There used to be priority pass from the Hilton Aspire card. That's gone. There are probably cards I'm missing that have priority pass. But for the most part, I would say if you have a card that's marketed in any way, shape or form about travel and the annual fee is over $400, I would think you probably get

lounge access through the airline that the card is, or Priority Pass? Probably a good bet. There's also a couple really random Priority Pass partnerships. For example, I can't remember the name of it. There's a company out there where they sell...

essentially travel insurance. And if your flight is delayed by more than like four hours, they'll give you access to priority pass. Oh, interesting. It's really bizarre. Simple, which is like the wealth front in Canada, they have like a black tier of their wealth management platform if you have a certain number of assets. And that I think included LoungeKey because I was looking up who has LoungeKey and it was like, how do I activate my LoungeKey membership with WellSimple? That came up in a Reddit thread. Do you know

How many Priority Pass memberships you have access to? Between you and your P2? Oh, okay. Let me see. And for whoever out there in the comments always says, I hate this show because you refer to your partner as a P2. I just say, okay, you don't need to listen. But it's not because that's what I refer to her as. It's just common language in this industry. But I've pared it down a little bit. I think the answer right now is 11. Okay.

Between me and Amy, we have 12 cards that include Priority Pass, one of which is the BOA Elite. So technically, there are three other memberships that I could assign. So we actually have 15 Priority Pass memberships, which prior to this conversation, I've never even considered activating in any way, shape, or form because why would I need them? Now I'm thinking...

Well, I guess if I have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, I don't. Yeah, then you don't. Then it doesn't matter. So there used to be better guesting rules with Chase or Amex. That's not the case anymore. Pretty much across the board, priority pass.

Almost every card is two guests. So I haven't activated them all except Bank of America because of the restaurant access. So there is a cool website that I will send a link to from One Mile at a Time that tells you based on the numbers on your priority pass, how to identify which one is which. Because once you get that card, you're like, oh, I want to use my Chase one.

How do I know which one is the chase one? How do I know which one's active? There's not an easy way, but the numbers can actually be decoded. My trick for that one is when I get the card and I activate it online, I create the account. I save all my accounts into a password manager. And in the username, I add the card that it was associated with. So I started doing that. My latest...

Priority pass login is like something BOA. So I know it. And now that you can do digital priority pass memberships, this is probably less relevant because you can log in. But it blows my mind that when you log in your priority pass account, at least the last time I did it, it doesn't say like, this is your Amex platform. They really should. It would be great. The only thing that's helped me for that one is whatever reason, if you have a MasterCard or at least with the City of Prestige,

It shows the MasterCard logo in the Priority Pass app. I don't know why, but it does. So that's how I know which card that is. I don't know if I have any MasterCard linked Priority Pass. So the MasterCard ones are the ones that allow restaurants now.

So my City Prestige and my old grandfathered Capital One Ventrix business card. Those two are MasterCards and they've retained the unlimited restaurant visits. Okay. Or like Bank of America, mine's like Visa, but it still has restaurants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And then real quick, the three airline cards, we already mentioned them. United Club Business, City Executive, Delta Reserve, and Delta Reserve Business. The fees are all $500 to $700. Authorized users on the City Executive card are free and...

and get access. They do get guests as well. Okay, they do. Yeah, yeah, they do. But they can't use the Alaska lounge. Correct, yeah. Okay, that's what it was. Because the primary cardholder gets a full Admirals Club membership. And with that membership, you can access Alaska lounges. But the AUs, they don't get a full membership. They just get access. So they cannot go to the Alaska lounge or any other partner lounge.

And there actually is a difference. On the back of the card of the primary is printed the words Admirals Club. The AUs don't have that word printed on it. So if you show up in Alaska Lounge, they'll ask to see those words printed on the back of your card. Wow.

Okay. Another thing I want to call out about the airline cards is that the United Explorer card, which is actually a cheap card with a low annual fee, has two one-time passes to the United Club per year. Yeah. So if you're not traveling that much and you just want to go to the lounge a couple times, United cards, right? Just load it to your card. Don't try to show the day pass, right? Yes. Unfortunately, if you have the day pass from the Explorer card, you are just subject to whatever restrictions they have. Yeah.

Okay, so we talked about all these lounges. We talked about all the different ways to get into them. How do you manage this? How do you keep them in your head? I know that years ago, we all used a website called Lounge Buddy, and you could go find them all. And then Amex bought it, shut it down, and Lounge Buddy just redirects to Amex. You went out and built a site because you didn't find what you wanted out there. What was missing? And how do you go about

finding lounges and rating them and everything in between. Yeah, so I created this website called This Lounge with a friend of mine. And I used to use Lounge Buddy all the time. It was like one of my most used apps on my phone. I would use it all the time and try and figure out what lounges were at the airport I was visiting and things like that. But when that disappeared, I couldn't really find a good resource for which lounge was good to go to, right? I mentioned earlier, like a lot of times airlines will send you to a lounge and you might have access to a better lounge at the same airport that they won't tell you about.

So I created that resource and it lists all the lounges. But I think the special part is that we rate as many lounges as we can. So we'll go from a scale from either we haven't rated it yet to actively. This is bad. Don't go to a one, two and three plane system. Kind of like a Michelin star system. One is like average lounge. Two is like a pretty good lounge. Three is like you should go here. And then we have a secret underpass.

unpublished fourth tier that's like, this is a bucket list experience that you should definitely go to. I found that people really resonate with that sort of ranking. And people are always asking me, hey, I have access to like six lounges at this airport. I have like two hours. Where should I go? And that is what we're trying to answer with this site. Yeah, because I found Lounge Review before I found your site. And I think

they do a fine job of let me find the lounges at this airport. But what you're trying to do is let me tell you where to go, not just give you the directory. And I think it's mobile optimized. It is, yeah. So you could just pin the bookmark to your home screen and it'll function like an app, but it won't work offline in those rare cases you have no data. Right. But yeah, I think it's super helpful when you're going to an airport like Heathrow and you're like, oh, 30 something lounges, which one do I go to? So I'm really glad you built that.

The only other thing I'll say is if you're flying on a particular carrier and you're relying on status, the Alliance websites often have a thing where you're like, I am United Gold. I'm flying on this airline on this day in this cabin. And it'll say, here's what you're eligible for. That was something I remember Lounge Buddy did a decent job back in the day where you were like, here's my status. Here's the class of service. Here's the cards I hold. And

and they kind of really built a profile out. I'll say the One World website is actually surprisingly good. They do a good job of cataloging all the lounges that One World Airlines partner with. But the one thing you have to watch out for is that if you read the description under each one, it'll say this lounge is only accessible to Cathay Pacific passengers or something like that. And that's because Cathay Pacific, outside of the One World Alliance, has specifically partnered with that particular lounge. So you might find, for example...

the Emirates lounge or something on there because they happen to use the Emirates lounge at one particular airport. But that doesn't mean all one world carriers can use it. Just Cathay Pacific. And you might be thinking, how many Alliance lounges are there? If I play this elite status game, I looked it up. It was a large number and I don't know where on this piece of paper it is, but I think it was about a thousand lounges. You have access to a star Alliance.

750 with SkyTeam and 650-ish with OneWorld. So it's a very hot. So yeah, it's a lot of lounges. So a lot of ways to, you said 3000 lounges. Love that you have a rating system. If I see a lounge that's unrated, can I rate it? So you can log in and mark it as you visited and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. Our plan is to take that and make it into like a Rotten Tomatoes type rating system where we have both like a critic review as well as a travel review.

And the reason for that is we want to make sure that our main rating system, like the one, two, three planes is all based on the same scale. So we only let certain trusted reviewers rate those, but everyone is welcome to thumbs up or thumbs down a lounge. And we'll turn that into a Rotten Tomatoes style score. Yeah. The only other thing I'll say is if you're flying, you know, your main trip and you're like, I really want to go to this place.

you can often search online and also find like really detailed blog posts reviews. But for the kind of casual trip, oh, I landed in this airport. What can I do here? Can I get in? I assume you'll tell me you can't get into this lounge. It's priority pass. It's this and all those rules are all part of the page. Yeah, we've got lists of all the priority pass lounges. We have some basic filters on the side. You can choose what ways of access you have and things like that. I will say that

The access rules are so complicated that I don't think anybody can get it 100% perfect. There's so many small exclusions. So you really got to read the terms and conditions for the specific access method you're using.

We try our best. The last thing I had this list of like hacks, workarounds, insider tricks, all these great things. I think we hit all of them. Two things we didn't mention. One, there are a lot of places where you can use some of these lounges on arrival. And so we didn't talk about all the amenities. One of the amenities I don't think we mentioned is showers. A lot of these higher end lounges and flagship lounges have showers. And so on an international trip, you land, go to the lounge, take a shower, clean up. And oftentimes you're landing it in

it in the morning. So that's one huge perk that I think sometimes people overlook is using that lounge on arrival.

Honestly, we have kids. We went to Park City, land back at SFO. We land at five o'clock. We've got to wait 40 minutes for our bags. We usually just pop in the lounge, have dinner and then go get our bags instead of just waiting at the carousel. So using lounges on arrival, I think is something that most people might not think to do. But if you land at a time to eat or you're waiting for bags or you need a shower, I think the arrival experience is good. If you're trying to get somewhere, yeah, get out of the airport.

Like the SFO United Club dinner or breakfast or lunch is not going to beat the best restaurant you can go to in the Bay Area at all. There are these stories of people who buy a refundable ticket and then just change it and eat dinner at the lounge every single day. And then they crack down on that. This isn't sanctioned.

But if you're flying domestically and you booked a connecting refundable ticket on an international flight, then your domestic status would allow you into a lounge. And I believe on some airlines, even if you were flying like SF to Chicago and coach and connecting international and business, you could still use a lounge in SF sometimes. Sometimes. It depends. So different alliances have different policies on this. Star Alliance, I think, is one of the most restrictive airlines.

They say that if you're flying a Star Alliance partner, you only get access, even if it's on the same itinerary, at the point of departure for the international flight. But if you're flying United, not like Lufthansa or something like that, you have access on your whole journey. And the reason I bring that up is a lot of times I'm booking award flights. Yeah. And as crazy as it sounds, and this just happened the other day, I was looking at booking a flight to Europe. And

And the long haul international flight was available. But the flight from SF to LA was only in coach. And so there are times where you're looking to book these awards. And because you're using miles and points, part of the flight is in economy. And you might have a long layover on the way. And so I was curious how that often works. OneWorld is actually the best policies for that. They'll allow on a connecting flight, no problem. Depends on the airline you're flying and the policies.

You mentioned arrival, right? United will let you have Polaris lounge access, not even just United Club access on arrival from a business class flight, as long as you can physically access the lounge, meaning you have a connecting flight or you came in from a preclearance airport, or even if you're on a different airline, that works too, as long as you can get to the lounge. So for example, if you have a connecting flight on Southwest and you landed at SFO from Hong Kong,

You can go to the United Players Lounge. Southwest happens to have free cancellation, I'm just saying. Yeah, there's a lot of ways you can do that. There's tons of little small rules and things like that. If you're trying to go on arrival, Priority Pass tends to be pretty lenient with it. Generally for Priority Pass, they don't care if you're arriving or departing. That may be different in some international areas, but for the most part, that's true. Even restaurants. I land all the time at SFO, go to the restaurant, get some to-go food, take it home and eat it.

So that tends to be a pretty good option. Awesome. I think we covered it all. Is there anything we missed? I think we covered the gamut here. This has been great. Thank you so much for joining me. Yeah, thanks so much, Chris.

Such a great episode. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please consider clicking that follow or subscribe button if you haven't already. It really helps us out. And there's no better way to support us than doing that or sharing the show with a friend, colleague or family member or even a random stranger is totally appreciated.

Also, links to everything in this and all other episodes are at allthehacks.com, where you can also find all the deals we find, as well as links to the top credit card bonuses. Finally, if you have any feedback, want to get in touch, or share a question you have for a future Mailbag episode, you can email me at podcast at allthehacks.com. That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.