New refreshed British Airways lounges to open at Berlin, Edinburgh and Chicago – Spring 2020.

British Airways has today announced it will be “refreshing” its First and Club lounges at Chicago due to be complete in Spring 2020, as well as “improvements” on the lounges in Edinburgh, scheduled for end of Spring and Berlin Tegel airport also scheduled for early Spring. The facelifts were actually announced as part of some corporate New Year's Resolutions, in the first days of this month though there wasn't much detail about it.

Also announced is an updated lounge at Heathrow though I won't spend time speculating on it until we hear more about it.

We should be expecting to see more charging ports for customers built into the furniture, which of course is more-or-less a requirement for the gadget driven world we live in now. Other cosmetic changes will be new carpets, marble tables etc. I don't think we will see a feature drinks bar like in other locations though.

The Berlin option is a rather interesting choice given the airport is scheduled for permanent closure this year with the grand opening of Berlin Brandenburg Airport. But then again, Brandenburg Airport has been ‘close to completion' for nearly the last decade.

The lounges will follow a similar décor to the wave of new lounge openings we saw last year. None of the press releases suggest there will be any closures to operation, so I expect a smaller scale renovation than we saw at other airports, such as Johannesburg or Milan Linate pictured above. Perhaps then the changes will happen at night when airports close and contractors can come in to swap out the furniture, though if I do hear anything contrary to this I will report back.