While I visit credit card lounges most often (Capital One Lounges, to be exact), I always try to visit new lounges when I have the opportunity to. On this trip to Bali, I booked in business class.
Flagship lounge access rules dictate that you must be flying in a domestic First marketed as “Flagship” or an international business class cabin. This includes OneWorld partner airlines (which applied to me since I was flying Japan Airlines business class). You also get access if you are a Platinum member or above travelling internationally.
While I visited the DFW Flagship lounge over 2 years ago, I’ve never checked out the LAX one.
Layout and Seating
The Flagship Lounge shares the same entrance as the Admirals Club. I’m not certain if this is a temporary measure due to all the construction or if this is how it’s meant to be. The agents downstairs check you in and provide you with a black laminated card that indicates you are a Flagship visitor.
The lounge has a few smaller sections of seating and then one main dining hall. The lounge felt quite spacious, even if it wasn’t the largest by square footage.
There was plenty of seating available, ranging from counters, 2-person tables, and 4-person tables. Notably, the lounge does not have a bartender or bar seating. There is however a wine chiller with wines and champagne in the center and hard liquor along the wall (and it’s quite the collection). That’s a lot of freedom allowing passengers to pour whatever liquor they wanted!
My one major complaint about this lounge is how loud it can get when employees are servicing areas. The food and dish carts that they wheel around are extremely loud to the tile flooring that it was quite disturbing (you could hear it from the other side of the lounge).
Food and Drink
I first arrived towards the tail end of breakfast and there was plenty of eggs, sausage, breads, and meats available. There was also sushi, cold cuts, a turkey sandwich, and cheeses available on the cold station.
An hour or so later, they brought out the lunch food items, which consisted of a wide range of international dishes. They had chicken tandoori, shrimp pad thai, curried cauliflower, poached asparagus, and multiple breads. The cold section remained mostly the same, with the addition of a pear and lettuce salad.
As a minor sidenote, I really appreciate how the menu gears more towards Asian cuisine. Maybe it’s just because LAX has more destinations to Asia, but they put quite a bit of thought into creating the menu. Well done American!
Other Amenities
This lounge is much smaller than the one at DFW (it’s the smallest in their network at just 15k square feet). It’s just a smidge bigger than the Sapphire Lounge BOS. It looks like there is just a single shower suite available for use and just one set of restrooms. The restrooms were quite large however, and each stall was completely closed off.
There is also a Flagship First dining area past the restrooms, but that section is under construction and currently unavailable.
Overall, my two meals were quite decent and I was happy with the lounge. Flagship Lounges stand out with Polaris Lounges in premium long-haul experiences. Delta lags behind here, though they’re slowly opening up Delta One Lounges. It didn’t ever feel super cramped (though it did get busy about 2 hours in, which is when I decided to explore the OneWorld lounge) with plenty of seating available.