Today's review will focus on the South African Airways Lounge in the domestic Terminal in Cape Town's International Airport. When Visiting the Lounge in February 2022 in the early morning hours, the experience was pretty decent.
You get lounge access when flying South African Airways Business Class as well as when being a status member of Star Alliance, that's it. So the Lounge customers are pretty limited as the only airline that operates domestic flights and is part of Star Alliance in South Africa is SAA and they only send their A319 around 3 times to CPT per day.
Now to the layout of the lounge, the lounge is situated where all the other lounges for domestic flights are, in the highest floor, right above the public viewing deck, you can reach it by an Elevator to which well placed signs lead you, just follow the signs that say: "Airline Lounges".
After being Welcomed by extremely friendly staff, you have the option to chose your seat, there are loads of seating options, most of them are leather chairs that give you a relaxed seating option, they are spread all over the lounge, as well you've got a working area situated in the middle of the lounge. I personally missed "normal" chairs at a table to work or especially eat, as eating was quite a challenge in these leather chairs. In the picture you can see some of the chairs I meant, but unfortunately, they're placed exactly in front of the bar, it isn't too nice to be permanently observed by the bar attendant when the lounge is that empty. Prominent are the big windows through those you can either have a view over the check-in area or over the apron, truly an awesome view. The lounge also offers a bar, where you could enjoy a drink, when visiting in the morning, I didn't felt I should try a drink. Insanely huge are the bathrooms, it seems you're in a palace, also the Lounge offers showers, which where being cleaned when visiting, so I was unable to check them out. Something I've never seen so far in other lounges than the SAA lounges is, that there is a separated kids lounge, where kids could chill, there are no other amenities especially for children other than chairs to sit in, but I really do like the offering.
Let's hop to the food section, they only started to fill the buffet when visiting, which is kinda a shame as this was the only flight in the morning, so all guests left when they finished dishing up! Anyways they had some baked beans and other hot continental breakfast dishes on offer, as well you could get some fruit platters, cereals and they even dished up croissants, for me though they didn't look too appealing. All in all it is a wide food variety, it tasted good as well but it was nothing outstanding. Especially sad was, that they, other than in Johannesburg, mostly used plastic plates.
To conclude and answer the question if the lounge is too big, I'd say it's an amazing lounge, you get everything you need and even more. But considering South African Airways isn't visiting Cape Town too many times per day, the lounge is quite over-scaled and I worried a little about how this could sum up in black numbers for the airline! But they probably own the lounge from the time before their bankruptcy, and have quite a good deal with the Airport in order to get cheap rates.
If you have an own opinion on the lounge, write yours in the comments!
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