OneWorld Business Class Lounge Los Angeles (LAX) Review: Underwhelming but Comfortable

Worth Coming to Airport Early For: NO (showing its age, mediocre food)

Better Than The Terminal? YES (as long as it’s relatively quiet)

Introduction

For my second LAX lounge of the day, I was off to check out the OneWorld Business Class Lounge. After an (extremely) disappointing visit to the Amex Centurion Lounge at LAX, I was excited to get some real food and a drink here. Long story short, this lounge is a much nicer place to hang out (at least vs. the Amex lounge), but is definitely showing its age and leaves a lot to be desired for an international business class lounge.

This was my last stop before heading out on my first long haul business class leg as part of my quick round-the-world trip to Singapore. Even though this lounge was just okay, I didn’t really care because I was super excited to try out Japan Airlines for the first time in their 777-300ER business class.

Here’s what you’ll find in this post:

Where To Find This Lounge & Access Policy

This lounge is located in the Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), which is LAX’s newest (and nicest) terminal serving international flights.

Not having any lounge access isn’t the worst thing here, the duty free shops can probably entertain you for awhile. They even have a Beecher’s cheese here:

This lounge can be found on Level 5 after security. This lounge is primarily catered to passengers on Qantas, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific. Operating hours for this lounge are 3 hours before first departure on any of those 3 airlines, to the last departure on any of those airlines. This more or less stretches the entire day, on most days.

This lounge is accessible to:

1. Those traveling in first or business class on a OneWorld airline
2. Oneworld Emerald or Sapphire members (and accompanying guest policies apply).

OneWorld airlines that currently operate out of LAX consistently are:

1. American Airlines
2. British Airways
3. Cathay Pacific
4. Fiji Airways
5. Finnair
6. Iberia
7. Qantas
8. Qatar

After navigating my way out from the Amex Centurion lounge, I found my way to this lounge on Level 5 of TBIT.

After a quick scan of my boarding pass for my flight on Japan Airlines, I was into the lounge.

Branding-wise, the Qantas / British Airways / Cathay focus of the lounge is very apparent – one of the first things on display was an indigenous map of Australia, which I thought was cool:

Lounge Tour & Amenities

First thing – this lounge is massive. It’s structured as as one giant room around a central glass atrium, although there is a second (quieter) large seating area in the back.

This lounge clocks in at 42,000 square feet, with capacity for up to 600 people. Even though I arrived in early afternoon ahead of lots of OneWorld departures, it never felt full capacity at all (unlike the madness of the Centurion Lounge at LAX).

This lounge has all the usual amenities you expect from an international business class lounge:

1. Food & drinks (with a full service bar)
2. Business Center
3. Wheelchair access
4. Showers & restrooms
5. Free wifi

Here’s the main bar area:

Fake fireplace seating:

If you keep walking towards the back, there’s a large room tucked away with its own self-serve drink bar:

And some nice views of the … TSA lines? I guess good people watching:

Here’s the main seating area – it definitely got busier here into the early afternoon:

There’s a big row of nice seating with some ambient skylight around this atrium, which was nice:

Here’s the business center with solid desk seating if you want to get some work done:

And the main seating area:

Overall, the physical space in this lounge is pretty nice. What makes it great is how massive it is, so it never really feels busy at all. I set up shop at the main center table to get some work done:

This lounge is definitely showing its age though – a lot of the furniture in the lounge is starting to show some wear and tear, and needs to be replaced:

Now, onto the most important part: the food. Overall, the food spread was pretty underwhelming -it was like a corporate, industrial-grade buffet with all food in oversized vats. In general, I don’t like lounge buffets, for both cleanliness and portioning reasons. The latest (and best) lounges nowadays will either have small plate options (which, for example, Chase and Capital One excel at) or a la carte dining. Hopefully long-term, all premium lounges will shift their food selection in this direction, which we’ve already started to see in many cases.

Here’s what they were serving for my time there:

Before long, it was time to head out of the lounge at onwards to board my flight to Tokyo.

Conclusion

All in all, this lounge was a decent space to hang out in for an hour and grab a coffee. It’s also massive, so never felt too crowded, even at peak international departure times. However, this lounge is starting to show its age with wear and tear. Also, don’t expect much from the food selections here – the food spread was pretty underwhelming for an international business class lounge. Not a problem for me today though, since I was excited to eat the food onboard my Japan Airlines business class flight, which was really good.