Emirates Los Angeles Lounge
Emirates brand new lounge at Los Angeles LAX Airport is a large 840 square yard lounge with seating for 157 customers. It has high end Italian marble, leather armchairs and Walnut wood finish, and gold Rolex clocks.
The dining area has a generous buffet featuring a broad selection of high-quality appetizers, cold and hot entrees, soups, and desserts.
However, the vast majority of customers in the Emirates Los Angeles Lounge are not flying Emirates - three times many are on Virgin.
In the evenings the LAX EK Lounge becomes the Virgin Australia Los Angeles Lounge, complete with Virgin staff. Virgin fly three times a day, every day, out of LAX. Virgin also grant access to their Gold and Platinum members, as well as Business Class, which means in the evenings the lounge becomes a very busy, very Australian place.
Los Angeles Emirates lounge review
Emirates brand new lounge at Los Angeles LAX Airport has all the classic Emirates facilities you'd expect with lots of leather armchairs, plenty of marble walkways, a large dining room, a good walk up bar, computers, prayer room and showers.
Finding the lounge isn't the easiest in the world: from the ground floor of TBIT you need to take a lift up two floors, to the same level as the Etihad and Star Alliance lounges, then along the balcony, and the lounge entrance is kind of hidden at the far end.
Once past the reception desk - which each evening has Virgin Australia staff sitting on one side, when the lounge becomes the Virgin Australia Los Angeles lounge.
You then walk down a long corridor which has the showers and bathrooms on one side, along with the newspaper rack, before entering the lounge proper.
The Emirates LAX lounge has quite a few two plus two seats, which is a problem as most of the passengers are on their own. There are the usual beige leather armchairs or deep heavy mahogany tables.
At one side is a large screen TV, with sofas arranged around it.
On the other side is the large dining area, with lots of rather solid upright tables.
There are two bar areas, one by the dining room, and another one that is slightly better stocked opposite the TV in the far corner.
However, the best part of the lounge is the amazing indoor terrace overlooking the terminal atrium, where you can take your five course dinner and drinks before the long flight to Dubai - or more likely Australia.
This rare feature, similar to British Airways Concorde Room balcony in LHR, is a wonderful open air terrace overlooking the shops in the TBIT terminal below, with a great view of the digital art tower in the middle of the terminal.
Food
There is great pre-flight dining in the Los Angeles Emirates lounge, with plenty of hot food.On one side is the classic Emirates refectory area, with a dozen or so hot dishes under the heated cabinet. There are the usual chicken, meat and rice plus pasta dishes.
Don't miss the soup too, with croutons.
In the evening, for Australian tastes, meat pie come out. These are great.
There is also the rather 1960s looking salad bar dome with smaller plated dishes kept on ice.
Under here there are two or three plated salads, plus a large cheese board and several sweet desserts.
Bar
There is the usual bar (plus a secondary smaller one in the back of the lounge) in the refectory area.It is all complementary, and free pour: so you can continually top yourself up.
The wine is good, with several top shelf brands, however there isn't much variety: There are just two whites in the four-hole wine chiller bucket. Two reds are on the worktop.
The champagne selection used to include Veuve Cliquot, but is now somewhat more mundane.
There is plenty of beer, in bottles, in the the fridge.
Business Facilities
Around the room there are plenty of power sockets (110v US plug only) and USB power ports, with free fast wifi, which works well. There is also the airports own supply as a backup. Wifi passwords are on little brass plaques on each table.However, if you are one of the few people who now don't pack your technology, there are five computers in a small business centre with a laser printer.
However this business centre can best be described as a table at one edge of the main lounge: it can't really be described as a room on it's own. It's not very private, and everyone can see what you are doing on the computer.
The LAX Emirates lounge Gold Rolex clocks are much in evidence.
Bathrooms
Clean, convenient and well-appointed shower suites are available, but just one shower in each gents and ladies bathrooms. Just ask the staff on the desk, and they will direct you.
They have towels as well as amenities such as toothbrushes, combs and deodorants.
Access
The Emirates Lounge LAX is on the 6th floor of the Tom Bradley International Terminal (or TBIT) at Los Angeles International Airport.
Note if connecting from an American flight, and you have an onward boarding pass on either Emirates or Virgin Australia you don't have to go landside and clear security again: instead just walk up the small corridor beside terminal 4 and 5 to get to TBit, airside.
There is access to the Emirates LAX Lounge for Emirates' First and Business class passengers as well as Skywards Platinum and Gold members, and for Qantas Gold and Platinum members flying on Emirates 490 seat Airbus A380 to Dubai, but not on the usual Qantas flights.
You can buy access as an economy passenger if you have no status, for $130USD. This is quite expensive.
This is when the lounge is operating in Emirates mode, 1230 to 1540. The lounge is also open 1700 to 2200 for Virgin Australia only.
Virgin Australia Business Class, plus Velocity Platinum & Gold also have access in the evening, when the Emirates lounge becomes the Virgin Australia Los Angeles lounge. There is no access on the Delta flights.
Once a week, for the VA6 Saturday morning departures (the rare daytime flight over the Pacific to BNE) LAX Virgin Australia Lounge access is available 4 hours prior to departure and closes 15 minutes prior to departure, so from 0700 to 1100.
Video: Emirates Lounge
Great wine selection
Lovely inside terrace