Airport lounges: how did they get so horribly, competitively decadent?

High-end cocktails, nap pods, waffle stations, tapas attendants, sashimi bars and brutalist art. The airlines’ battle to please the 1% is getting increasingly bizarre

Age: American Airlines opened the first airport lounge in 1939.

Appearance: Dripping in caviar and cocktails.

Airport lounge wars – is this a TV show where teams of would-be hospitality entrepreneurs compete to design and deliver airport lounge experiences for a demanding celebrity jury? No (but I’d absolutely watch that). It’s the arms race to provide increasingly extravagant lounges to persuade customers to shell out for first-class plane tickets or fancy credit cards that grant access, as reported by the Washington Post.

Hang on, my credit card gives me lounge access! You queue up in a dingy corridor and eventually, if a scowling woman in a blazer deems you worthy, you get a picked-over buffet of dried-out ham and mini croissants, plus the chance to fight for an uncomfortable chair, still warm from the previous set of buttocks. Yes, that’s the lounge experience for your kind of low-value riff-raff – people are increasingly complaining about queues and overcrowding; American Airlines is expecting 18m lounge visits this year. But at the exclusive end of the market, competition has heated up in the last five years and lounges are getting really decadent.

What’s on offer? High-end cocktails, nap pods, waffle stations, a “juice wall”… Capital One offers a “tapas attendant” serving important Spanish produce at Reagan Airport in Virginia, and pick-your-own personalised cheese flights at JFK; Emirates Dubai has a sushi and sashimi bar.

Meh, I’m lactose-intolerant, teetotal and allergic to fish. How about the Air France “Première” experience at Charles de Gaulle; with a Sisley spa and the Wonder Block?

Ooh, what’s that? Some kind of amazing massage chair? No, it’s a pile of bricks.

Excuse me? Sorry, a “renowned work of art” by Jean-Michel Othoniel “combining monumentality with delicacy”.

You’re not convincing me to shell out. As if you could afford it. But how about Swiss Air Zurich’s private bedrooms, with luxurious double beds and a “panoramic view of the Alps”? Singapore Airlines also has bedrooms in Changi, and what the Lounge Guru – a luxury flight and lounge influencer – calls “one of the most luxurious airport shower suites I’ve ever seen”.

Phwoar, now we’re talking. And I’ve saved the best till last: some lounges offer separate security lines and passport control so you never have to mix with the grubby proles. Air France in Charles de Gaulle even transports you planeside by Porsche if you’re travelling first class.

That’s what lounges are really about, aren’t they? Getting to feel special. Oh yes, it’s all about having – and showing off – your status. Lounge customers “Don’t have to go out in gen pop,” an American Airlines spokesperson told the WaPo.

Isn’t that the phrase they use in prisons? Brrrr. Of course, none of this is exclusive enough for real one-percenters.

Do say: “Can I top up your blackberry-sage spa water before your facial, madam? Or would you prefer a visit from the caviar cart?”

Don’t say: “Real luxury is feeling like you’re better than everyone else.”