Washington, DC, July 23, 2024 --  

The proliferation of exclusive airport clubs is driving worsening service for all.

When the new Centurion Lounge opened at Washington Reagan National Airport last Wednesday, it was a timely arrival.  Only two days later, a global Microsoft Windows  computer meltdown triggered by a failed security update caused cascading flight cancellations worldwide.  

By Friday afternoon, the gate areas of Reagan airport were standing room only, with delayed passengers filling every seat, crowding the gates, with  the most  exhausted sleeping on floors or squatting anywhere with an open patch of space.

This was not the case in American Express' new Centurion Lounge.  12,000 square feet of the airport (space that had once been available to all ticketed passengers) was now devoted to members of an exclusive club. Admission is available only to American Express credit card holders in the highest tiers of platinum ($695 annual fee) and above.

Elite members are provided food by three celebrity chefs, a curated wine selection, a full bar with specialty cocktails, showers, workstations¹,  and most importantly on this day, an actual place to sit that is not on the rubbish-strewn floor filled with thousands of stranded people without elite status.

Unfortunately for the elites, there just wasn't enough elite space to go around.  A line of people waiting to get in the lounge snaked to the south end and of terminal 2.  A handful of guards blocked the entrance to the lounge, forcing the poor elite status holders to wait their turn by standing in a crowded line just like the non-elites around the rest of the airport.  

Wow, how classy!

This waiting line is a critical feature of American Express' lounge policy, which forces the elites to wait outside even though empty space exists. This spare space is held in reserve for the extra-elite.  Amex Centurion Card holders (offered by invitation only and carrying a $5,000 annual fee) are always allowed to cut the line.

But on Friday,  those with lesser elite status could only dream and wait.  The multi-decade degradation of American dressing and grooming standards meant that standing in a crowd next to your fellow Amex elite members was hardly better than standing next to the hoi polloi.  Those in line were often heavily tattooed and dressed down.  Sometimes way down.  

This is no surprise.  For several years it has been difficult to discern between the ill-fitting t-shirts worn by billionaire tech moguls from ill-fitting t-shirts worn by the homeless.  You really have to squint to see the logo.

The elites in line for the lounge (which clearly has no dress code) wore not just t-shirts, but in some cases shorts.  In the early 1990s, such attire would be considered bad enough to get you booted from a budget airline's coach standby line.  But now it is the regalia of the "elite".

The only thing that set these elites apart from the masses of peasants hudled around the airport is money, and more importantly, the willingness to blow it on such frivolous and tacky nonsense.  And apparently money talks.  The quasi-governmental Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority surrounded a good chunk of terminal 2's scarce floorspace to American Express to build this private club, undoubtedly in exchange for a hefty chunk of change.  For Amex and the Airport Authority, it's a win-win.  The only people who lose are the exact people the airport authority is supposed to serve -- the thousands of passengers sitting or lying on the ground because not enough seats and space is available.

Such abrogation of responsibility is hardly surprising given the example set by the Federal Government, whose Transportation Security Administration took over airport screening lines in 2002, and then spent two decades understaffing the system as passengers suffered long lines and surely treatment from agents exuding all the charm if the DMV.

The solution?  Sell decent public service to the elite status -- folks willing to pay $78 to join TSA PreCheck are allowed to cut the long screening line dedicated to mere taxpayers. And those willing to pay an extra $189 to a private company called Clear, are allowed to skip TSA's long document check line prior to screening and go straight to the screening line.

Not to be outdone, Customs and Border Security created their own elite program called  Global Entry, costing $120 as of late this year.  Don't want to wait in the long line of thousands of Americans returning from overseas while only two of twenty agent booths are open?  Well, you'd better pay for elite status so you can cut in line in front of your fellow Americans.  Wow, that's classy!

Such elite programs on America are completely out of control, and are contributing to the declining level of service for everyone else.  So long as the well-to-do can join these elite programs (largely the same people with disproportionate influence to demand better service) there will be far less incentive for airports to maintain a decent quality of service for all. And to the extent that airports earn profits from these elite programs, it actually incentivizes them to degrade service further. If this isn't a case of moral hazard than what is?

Worse yet, these elite membership programs make a mockery of America's once widely shared ideal of a classless society and degrade both our culture and civic health. It's one thing when greedy corporations seek to squeeze a few hundred dollars out of wannabe elites with an inferiority complex by selling the right to engage in such tackiness.  But when public agencies with mission to serve the people get into the game, such  tacky behavior is worthy of public outrage.

Notes:

1. American Express, American Express to Open 29th Centurion Lounge at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, July 16, 2024