Lounges... BA's Terminal 1 & Madrid

This week I had the chance to spend a few hours in BA's T-1 lounge for what will probably be the last time. BA's new terminal opens up next month, and most of what's in T-1 today will eventually move to other terminals, so I can only assume the lounge pavillion will also close or be scaled back considerably.

Personally, I find LHR's terminals 1, 2 & 3 to be about as attractive as a tube station (without the urine smell, however).

The exceptions to that are the various shopping areas and the private airline clubs.

The Terraces lounge in T-1 is pretty slick as my lounges experiences go. Lots of small finger foods & fruit at stations scattered about the lounge area, several different "theme" areas (a quiet zone, TV zones, and a quasi meeting zone with larger round tables) plus a central serving station with a self-service bar and a cold table with yogurt & fruit in the mornings, and various salads and lunch meats in the afternoon (I got there just as they were switching over). Wifi is pay (Boingo works), but they do have a half dozen or so free terminals where you can use MS Office and a web browser. Only downside is that you can't plug in a USB drive, so if you don't have your docs available via the web, there's no way to do anything in Word or Excel...

IB's lounge in MAD is spacious, but they're pretty stingy with the food... bags of peanuts and chips, a few pre-packaged muffins & cookies. Nothing fresh, and no fruit. Wifi is pay (again, Boingo works), but they do have wired connections available for free (leave your BP with the desk for a deposit on the ethernet cable). That's the only lounge I've found so far that has such a provision.

Time to go jump on a flight...