Triangle Trip

Effective on Feb 1, 2023, American Express Centurion Lounge will be charging $50 for each guest ($30 for those under 18). Under 2 years old is still free. This is a big win for business flyers who don’t want to be disturbed by kids running around in the lounge. This is a big loss for family members who bring their families or friends along with them when they travel. Amex does not allow kids under 13 years old to sign up as additional card members so can’t get around that either. Check out the article here.

Will you be keeping your American Express Platinum?

Here’s a related article on why you should add cardholders to your account.

There are nine (9) terminals in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) – Terminals 1 to 9 and Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT). Not all LAX terminals have airside connections (i.e., you will need to go through security from TBIT to Terminal 1).

The American Express Centurion Lounge at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is located in Tom Bradley International Terminal (TBIT), which is the main terminal with many international airlines. TBIT has also been recently expanded to include a set of West Gates. The AMEX Centurion Lounge is located on the south side of the TBIT right after TSA Pre-Check. For those who do not have TSA Pre, Clear is also located at the same checkpoint. If you do not have TSA Pre, you will need to go through security at the other end of TBIT.

If you are departing from Terminals 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 and want to access the American Express Centurion Lounge before your flight, we recommend you go through security at TBIT. Below is a chart of estimated walk times to get to your terminals and gates. Allocate more time if you are traveling with children or a slow walker as there are escalators (more walking if they are out of service) that connects these terminals.

The Tom Bradley Terminal (TBIT) is NOT connected to Terminals 1, 2, and 3. This means you will need to go through security at TBIT to access the Amex lounge and go through security at your terminal again for your flights going out of Terminals 1, 2, and 3. As of 2022, LAX Terminal 1 is mostly Southwest flights and Terminals 2 and 3 are Delta flights and its codeshare partners like Virgin. If you’re an American Express Platinum member, you can go to the Delta lounges as an alternative.

We recently put this question to the test on American Airlines. We booked two business class seats with our twin infants. The airplane was a three cabin plane. Online you could select the seats next to each other with no issues. Right up until check in, they swapped one of the seats to another row. This could have been automated or someone noticed the common issue this causes. The standard practice is you cannot have two infants in lap in the same row due to number of oxygen masks. There has to be enough for each passenger. This applies mainly to economy class. You would have to buy the third seat to have one infant take that seat.

After calling the airline about this issue for Business Class, multiple people said it was okay for this particular plane and flight. It seems like even though there are two seats, there are a standard four masks above. We had to ask passengers to swap but again we then ran into issue on board with the attendants. We told them how we called and said it was okay. Off they went to confer and gave us approval after they looked up in the airplane manual. Your mileage may vary depending on the flight but it was all good for us with some debate.