Sydney 2014: LAX TBIT Oneworld Business Class Lounge

I was really excited to try a number of different airport lounges on this trip, and first up was the relatively new oneworld Business Class Lounge at Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX. Unfortunately, the first class lounge wasn’t yet open by the time I was there (and in fact opened up only a month ago or so), which meant that the business class lounge was quite crowded with premium cabin passengers as well as all oneworld Emerald and Sapphire members. There were many stories at the time of people being refused entry to the lounge because of overcrowding, but fortunately, that did not happen to me.

On this trip, I visited a number of Qantas lounges, and I’m a pretty big fan overall. The lounges are generally very smartly designed and cater to things that are important to people who visit lounges frequently (like electrical outlets). That being said, the main problem with this lounge during my visit was overcrowding, which should be better alleviated by now.

There was a fair amount of seating, including a funky circular area around a fireplace. I ended up sharing a communal table so I could get some work done.

The food options were quite impressive for a business class lounge. There were over 8 different cold salads, 4 hot dishes, 5 desserts, 2 different food carts, rice, and bread. And besides the variety, the food was actually pretty good and healthful. Just some examples of the food options: quinoa with sweet potatoes, chickpeas and cauliflower, broccoli with blue cheese. The food wasn’t particularly well labeled, though, so you might need to ask someone if you have allergies/restrictions/aversions. Like I love broccoli, but I really didn’t want to be eating blue cheese with it (I know, my life is so hard sometimes).

I’d say the food was on a par with the Amex Centurion Lounge at DFW in terms of quality/tastiness/freshness. It’s definitely some of the better food I’ve had in an airport lounge, and it’s significantly better than the food at the American Airlines Flagship Lounge at LAX (which was serving soupy mongolian beef for dinner that day). If I were taking an overnight flight in business class, I would probably just eat this food in the lounge and go straight to sleep on the plane.

 

One problem with the food options is the buffet location. The buffet is positioned in the corner, which means there are definite people-flow issues on one side, and given how busy this lounge can get, I’m surprised that’s where they chose to situate the buffet.

They also have food carts in the lounge to provide a more local touch, and the woman in the picture was preparing tacos.

The wifi in the lounge was decently fast, even given the number of people in the lounge, and they have a number of showers available, which worked well.

Overall, this lounge has some features that make it really impressive for a business class lounge (at least for a lounge in the United States). The food selection is good and varied, the wifi is decent, there are tons of electrical outlets, the showers are good, there were lots of servers going around collecting plates. But it was just really crowded while I was there. Hopefully the crowding issues are better now that they’ve expanded, as this could be a great airport lounge.