American Express Centurion Lounge New York LaGuardia (LGA) Review (Decent)

Worth Coming to Airport Early For: YES (although just 30 mins – 1 hour)

Better Than The Terminal? No if lounge is busy (LaGuardia is just so nice now)

Heading back home for the holidays, I was flying out of LaGuardia, so had my chance to access my first Centurion Lounge on my own since getting my Amex Platinum card. All in all, was exactly as I expected, which meant jammed packed with coastal elitists, consultants, lawyers, bankers, Away suitcases, and a decent buffet to boot. But it sure does beat paying $30 for an airport meal otherwise.

In this post, you’ll find:

How to Access the Lounge

Access to Centurion lounges are restricted to holders of the:

1. Amex Platinum Card
2. Amex Centurion Card
3. Delta SkyMiles Reserve (if flying on Delta the same day)

I assume 95% of readers will be accessing a centurion lounge via the standard Platinum card, which is one of the main advertised perks of the card.

As long as you have a same-day boarding pass and are visiting within three hours of departure time, you’re good to access the lounge.

Note that Amex Centurion lounges are notorious for overcrowding and lines, although this should start to cut down now that free guests aren’t even allowed, which brings us to the next point.

Guest Policy

For Amex Platinum card holders, free guests are not allowed in this lounge. On one hand, this is a big drawback for a card that charges a $695 annual fee. However, this is American Express’ direct response to rampant overcrowding and in some cases, lines that have made these lounges a victim of their own success. It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves now that the US domestic lounge landscape is becoming a hyper-competitive battle between Amex, Capital One, and Chase. Note that guests are still allowed for Platinum card holders for a $50 charge, or if you spend $75,000 on the card within a calendar year (I have zero shot of achieving this, nor if I could it would still definitely not be the best use of spend).

Waitlist Feature

One interesting new feature to note is that it’s possible to check-in early for your spot at the Centurion lounge in case you’re flying at a peak time for the corporate road warrior (i.e, Monday morning or Thursday afternoon).

To access this, open the Amex app on your phone, and navigate to “Membership”, then “Lounges”. Then choose “Get Eligibility Code”. If there’s a wait, the app will let you know how long your estimated time is in the queue and when to arrive at the entrance. If there’s no wait, you have 10 minutes before the code expires.

Where is The Lounge at LGA

The Centurion Lounge at LaGuardia is located in the beautiful, relatively new Terminal B.

Below are the airlines currently serving terminal B at LGA:

American Airlines

United Airlines

JetBlue

SouthWest

Frontier

Air Canada

Basically, this is all airlines except for Delta (sorry Delta flyers). You can access the Delta SkyClub at LGA with the Amex Platinum however, which I’ll review in a later post.

Once you get past security, walk through the shopping area, then past the fountain on the right side. There are plenty of signs that make it easy to spot.

Lounge Amenities and Review

The lounge is your standard cookie cutter Centurion Lounge, which means a decent buffet with hot food, a well-stocked bar, coffee, espresso, and mixed seating.

Check in was super quick with no line, just needed to show my card and boarding pass. They also scanned my eligibility code, which seemed redundant, but all good.

The lounge is comprised into two main sections: 1) the larger buffet and bar area and 2) smaller business center and quieter seating (at least when I went).

The main area was extremely crowded, although made sense given it was a Friday night heading into a holiday weekend.

My buffet meal creation:

Yes, I had two plates. Yes, I regretted this.

I sat and worked a bit in the quiet business center area, which has a mix of table seating and mini office rooms if you need to take a call, or just want some peace and quiet.

Last but not least, the bathroom was very clean and nice:

Conclusion

Before long, it was time to board my quick flight down to DC. Overall, the Centurion Lounge exactly met my expectations, in that it was

1. Very crowded
2. Had good food in drinks

For future flights out of Terminal B at LaGuardia, I wouldn’t go super early to kill hours at the lounge, but I’d definitely show up an hour early to grab a hot meal and avoid cooking and cleaning at home. That alone is worth $50 right there! Kidding. Maybe.

The wifi was also very fast for getting some last minute work done, and even though the main area was hectic the business lounge was nice and quiet where you could actually relax / focus on work as needed.