American Admirals Club Lounge

The San Juan Airport is the busiest airport in the Caribbean region. Most of the airlines, however, operate out of 2 of the 5 concourses (A and D). Concourse A is dominated by Jet Blue while D is shared by American, Delta, Southwest, Spirit, United and US Airways.

Fortunately for us, we were flying on American Airlines (using our British Airways Avios to book the award) and had American Express Platinum Cards. While the benefit is going away in March 2014, for the time being, Platinum card holders get complimentary access to AA airport lounges for themselves and 1 extra person. Between my two parents (who each had their own cards), we could guest in the four of us. The lounge entrance is actually not easy to see if you're not looking for it (as you can see from the photo). Thankfully, my father knew where to find it.

At check in, the desk agent was very familiar with the Platinum Amex benefit and didn't even have any issues allowing all of us to enter under just my father's card. As soon as we walked in, we saw a 10 foot Christmas tree and tons of open space.

The lounge was actually quite nice and had a bar offering complimentary beer, house wine and coffee (as well as premium spirits and wine for a charge). You could also order sandwiches for cash. There were tons of seating (with or without tables) and free WiFi access. We found some empty seats without any other travelers right in front of the 60" LCD flatscreen TV showing the new Spiderman on BlueRay.

 

There were stairs leading to another floor, but they seemed to have closed off that area since they were significantly under capacity on the first floor. In fact, going around the corner, you found complimentary snacks as well as another seating area with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the tarmac.

We had about an hour to kill before we were scheduled to board. While they had complimentary snacks (crackers, cookies and dried fruit) and soft drinks (water, sodas, juices), we decided to leave a little early and find ourselves some more substantive meal options to take on the flight with us. Sitting in economy seating for 4 hours, we weren't going to be served meals on our 2PM flight, so we wouldn't have a chance to eat anything until at least 7PM by the time we drove an hour from JFK Airport to our Manhattan apartment.