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Inside the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at SFO

Where: San Francisco International [map], San Francisco, CA, United States
October 7, 2011 at 3:14 PM | by | Comments (0)


There are airport lounges, and then there are Virgin Atlantic Clubhouses—the type of lounge that makes you pray for a flight delay. Happily, when we scored access to the Clubhouse at San Francisco International Airport the other week, we were early for our flight. Unhappily, it left on time. Here’s what we found.

The room is bright and airy, overlooking the runway like most lounges. But unlike most, it’s sexy. Take the vast bar, for example—it’s colored an icy blue, and takes up about half the length of the (lengthy) room. Propping up the bar is even more appealing when there’s a shelf of travel guides to flick through, too. Over by the window, facing the bar, is a row of armchairs.

There aren’t many snacks scattered around—just a plate of fruit and cookies at the bar—but, instead, the end section of the lounge works as a restaurant, with a cluster of TVs to watch while you wait for your table service, and pictures of pinups if you’re bored by the telly. By the window down that end are sofas, which also get table service. Windows have blue and pink-tinted filters over them, which is weird at first but quite soothing.

Gallery: Inside the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse at SFO

The other end of the lounge is brighter with more sofas, tables and another TV. Off the side of that is a business center with two computers and lots of stationery to steal use. That runs onto the bathrooms, of which there are just three. All are self-contained, all have showers, and yes, they’re unisex. We showered and it was good, though to be totally spoiled about it, we could have done with some body lotion.

For reading material, as well as the standard newspapers there was a nice selection of travel supplements from the weekend’s papers. A nice touch!

Our only complaints: table service was a little slow (there was just one server for the whole lounge) and we could have done with a couple more bathrooms in the event people save it up to the last minute before boarding. Especially as they all have showers; we heard a couple of people trying to get in while we were showering. If people were showering in all three...you get the picture.

Also, it felt slightly weird being a unisex bathroom. You know, what with having a shower in it, and the door being frosted glass. But hey, if any airline’s going to give you a frisson in the lounge, it’ll be Virgin.

[Photo: Julia Buckley for Jaunted]

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