Airport lounges cement the class system. And the food's not even that good

The Guardian

4 days ago

Summer, I've been told, is travel season. From about May to August, we're all meant to be flinging cash at airlines, hotels, overpriced restaurants with watered-down Aperol spritzes, and whatever new wonder drug is supposed to make our bodies moderately palatable for display at the beach. The social pressure to go somewhere (anywhere) during summer has only gotten more pervasive since social media began its clumsy, knifepoint home invasion into our brains. Our Instagram and TikTok accounts are just free advertising for the travel industry. 'Gosh, Spain looks nice. But maybe Mexico City is more chic these days?' It doesn't matter where you go, as long as you go.
Travel seems more socially necessary than ever, even while the toll it takes on the environment gets heavier and the prospects of being allowed back home get grimmer. Travel is not healthy for the planet, and it's not healthy for your mental state. But, according to the New York Times, it is delicious. Airport lounges across the world are investing in better food, fancier accommodations and other perks like 'being left alone' and 'a functional shower'. You can have access to posh hideaways like the Delta One Lounge or the American Express Centurion Lounge for a price (either credit card fees or a long, expensive flight to a place you don't necessarily want to go).
Awaiting you are opulent buffets with food from celebrity chefs such as José Andres and Kwame Onwuachi, and open bars with elaborate cocktails on offer. Most things in these lounges are free, but there are always extras for those who are truly irresponsible with their money. The Delta One Lounge at New York's John F Kennedy airport offers dollops of caviar for $85. At most of these places, you can get actual champagne, rather than the bathtub-flavored grape water they have on tap for losers like me. They should give you a free button to wear with every purchase that says 'I can afford the good stuff' – so everyone knows you have no student loan debt.
All of this is meant to help airlines and credit-card companies maximize profits for their avaricious stockholders. They will charge an exorbitant amount of money for well-heeled passengers to, say, get their feet rubbed by a nude stranger, but if you can't afford such a luxury at the airport, you can get naked and rub a guy's feet for free.
An airport is now like the condo building from JG Ballard's novel High-Rise, where our ossified class system manifests itself in a massive concrete structure that divides us based on income and accident of birth. The lower floors are occupied by tradespeople, the middle floors by artists and educated strivers. The top floor is reserved for the truly wealthy and the landed gentry, who sneer at the lower floors and expect fealty. The airport is similarly stratified. It's not just one lounge per airline. Now, the mind-bogglingly decadent Delta One Lounge sits near the decidedly middle-class Delta SkyClub, where the food consists not of caviar or succulent roast pork, but a melange of vaguely local fare (at Detroit's SkyClub, I recently turned my nose up at the wettest casserole I've ever seen, paired with a white dinner roll smothered in glistening butter, which I assume is a midwestern delicacy with a funny name like 'Gristlepassage').
The SkyClub is an attainable simulacrum of luxury, with free magazines and a hot chocolate bar. These middlebrow lounges are routinely overcrowded, because the barrier to entry is lower. In the Delta One Lounge, which I cannot afford, I assume the exclusivity means that more often than not, it's just you and a manservant named Longbottom whose only job is to carry your bags to and from the lavatory. The Delta One lounge is like a beacon of contentment (or an obnoxious tease, depending on how jet-lagged I am) when I walk past. I turn into Oliver Twist at the sight of a Delta One Lounge, begging for a crumb of lobster before my connection to Salt Lake City. I know envy in a way that makes me feel like a child deprived of screen time on a long drive to Yosemite national park.
Surely this sort of class cold war can't sustain itself forever. In High-Rise, conditions in the building deteriorate – elevators stop working, trash chutes clog, and electricity fails regularly. As the physical structure falls into disarray, so does the citizen population. There are riots, assaults, murders and the eating of a dog. I could see this happening at Los Angeles international airport (LAX) if the Buffalo Wild Wings runs out of honey mustard – throngs of unwashed masses re-enacting January 6 on the unsuspecting patrons of the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse. All for a spot of caviar.
You might be wondering, though: is the food as good as the New York Times claims? Is it actually worth setting fire to a public place for a taste? In short, yes.
Also, no.
You see, the airport lounge is only as good as the food outside it is bad. It's a microcosm of how our class system perpetuates itself. As things grow more dire for the lower class, the middle class is driven to consume even more, as a signal to the world that they are, in fact, better. The deeper the hole gets beneath you, the more desperate you are to climb out. I am so eager to avoid having to swallow a limp hoagie at the LAX Jersey Mike's that I will spend money I shouldn't for the privilege of a slightly firmer sandwich in an airport lounge. Is the food demonstrably better at the Centurion Lounge at Heathrow than it is in the main concourse? No – it all probably gets squirted out at the same sludge factory. But it makes me feel special, because someone is being paid minimum wage to take my plate when I'm done eating.
While half-asleep, dehydrated and full of flight-related anxiety, I can't even tell the difference between good and bad, right or wrong, fabulous or fetid. I am a yawning cavern of need, hoping to be filled up with whatever greasy carbs I can find. I had a perfectly adequate chicken tinga at the LAX SkyClub recently, which satisfied me until I woke up in a cold sweat over the Atlantic Ocean nine hours later. I likely would have responded to it more negatively if I had eaten it out of a paper cup next to a Hudson News while a dog in a gym bag silently farted a few feet away.
Airlines, like every other big business, have figured out that the packaging is more important than the product. It's about the emotional response people have to what you're selling. The lords and ladies on the top floor of the metaphorical high-rise of our society have deigned to offer up a Disneyland re-creation of civilization, where we are treated with dignity rather than herded like lemmings over a cliff made of rubbery chicken. As was once said: 'Let them eat cake (as long as they have a Chase Sapphire Rewards card).'