At airports around the world there are first-class lounges that offer their first class passengers free world-class meals, an open bar with free unlimited drinks, free internet access, self-serve bars, free gifts, private rooms, free magazines and newspapers, and private rooms. Some first-class lounges even offers private bedrooms, full buffet, massage services, gyms, spas, and swimming pools.
The top-ten first class lounges are:
1. Singapore - Singapore Airlines - Gold Kris Lounge.
2. Hong Kong - Cathay Pacific Airlines - Blue-Chip Lounge.
3. Dubai - Emirates Airways - Elegant Lounge.
4. Abu Dubai - Etihad Airways - Premium Lounge.
5. Instanbul - Turkish Airways - Millennium Lounge.
6. London - Virgin Atlantic - Clubhouse.
7. London - British Airways - Galleries.
8. New York - Lufthansa Airlines - Premium Lounge.
9. Miami - American Airlines - Admirals Club.
10. San Francisco - United Airlines - Red Carpet Club.
There is one easy little-known trick to get access to any first class lounge at the airport for free.
Simply follow the following steps:
1) Purchase a fully refundable first-class airline ticket which can be refunded without any fees. Pick an airlines with a first-class lounge that you wish to access.
2) Go to the airport, check-in, and get your first-class boarding pass.
3) Use your first-class airline ticket to bypass security.
4) You can now use your first-class ticket to access the first-class lounge.
5) You can then cancel your ticket anytime before the flight takes off to receive a full refund credit back on to your credit card. It is recommended that you call the airlines to cancel the ticket from inside the lounge, immediately after you gain access.
You could book the actual flight that you will be taking this day in advance. It is possible to book both a first class and a coach ticket for the same person in advance as long as they are on different airlines. It would also be possible to book your coach ticket after you cancel your first-class ticket.
If you are flying out of a larger International Airport like New York, San Francisco, or Chicago O’Hare, it would be possible for someone flying domestic coach to also purchase a fully-refundable International First-Class ticket from the same airport and gain access to the International First Class lounge while they are waiting for their flight.
In some cases you might want to cancel your ticket and get your refund “before” accessing the first-class lounge, because it may be possible that airlines won’t refund all of your money if they realize that you used your ticket to access the lounge. However, even if the ticket is canceled in the system you can often use the paper ticket itself to access the lounge.
This trick would also people to purchase fully-refundable international tickets to access the duty free shops without leaving the country.
Awesome idea, I have gotta try this sometime! I have always wanted to check out those high-end first class lounges.
it might just be easier and less risky to just try and sneak into the first class lounge.
Sometimes that works. I have even showed the desk at the first class lounge my employee badge with my photo and they assumed that it was a club card to access the lounge and just waved me by. The same thing might work if you just raised up your tickets when you walked by the receptionist. She might just assume that they are first class tickets without even looking at them.
I have heard about people buying refundable tickets to Mexico so that they could purchase goods from the Duty Free shops… this works especially well when the Duty Free shops are before the customs desks. It would be more of a hassle if you had to go through customs both ways to buy some duty free.
wow, you could take this further and use your gift card trick to get the first-class ticket to access the lounge. the only downside to that would be that they would know it was you… so don’t try it.
This may work on exchangable tickets as well. Say you book a flight to Europe which is first class, with some tickets they would allow you to downgrade without a fee, even right before the flight. So you could purchase a first class ticket and use the lounge than right before your flight you could downgrade to coach and only pay the reduced coach rate.
Hey wait!!! I recently heard about a similar trick where people were booking flights (that they were never intending to take) to get frequent flyer points and status and then canceling the flight. Somehow they were able to cancel their flight and KEEP THEIR FREQUENT FLIER POINTS even after it was canceled.
Does anyone know which airlines this was happening on? How were they doing this?
If you have enough frequent flyer points you can take free flights, access the first class lounge regardless of what class you are flying, and get free upgrades from coach to first class.
If you are a beautiful, well dressed woman you can just wait outside the first class lounge dressed sexy and wait for a guy to walk by and invite you into the first class lounge.
No need to change ticket details, you can make the money in the spread betting portal
besides first class tickets people generally use club cards to access the first class lounges. they check the validy of these club cards by swiping the magnetic strip, if you have a card writer/encoder it’s totally possible to use someone’s legit first class lounge card and encode a dummy card which can be used to access these lounges. this is another reason why it’s totally worth investing $300 in a magnetic stripe encoder.
How long have you been placed on hold when calling the airlines? My fear would be ordering the ticket, trying to refund it, only to be placed on hold until the plane leaves.
if you booked with one of the larger airlines, you shouldn’t be put on hold for too long.