I tried the Leeds Bradford Airport lounge but my bland breakfast suffered turbulence
The lone sloppy poached egg, splattered baked beans, the sad looking meal-saver hash brown, sausages and bacon rashers came together to form one very bland miserable looking breakfast dish. It looked like it had been ejected onto the runway, after suffering a severe bout of turbulence.
I must have been the second guest to enter Leeds Bradford Airport’s lounge, its ‘plush, cosy, first class’ 1432 Runway Club, just after 4am on a dark September morning. The sterile thrown together breakfast dish matched the atmosphere of the lounge.
The 1432 Runway Club is the better of two lounges with entry for two-and-a-half hours at £40. The other option being the airport’s Yorkshire Lounge at £30.
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The advantages of the 1432 club brings with it include plated table service, adults only, some additional drinks options and a seemingly nicer décor.
Frazzled and bleary-eyed, I’d ventured into the 1432 club and taken one of the ‘comfy’ seats which had stains all over and was worn and tatty.
LBA’s website boasted the lounge had been ‘newly refurbished’ (last year) but it seemed the décor was already overdue a replacement. The furniture looked like it had really taken a beating with spilt drinks over the course of the past year.
'Ordering felt awkward'
The setup of having to order each drink at the bar felt awkward. Whereas at Manchester, it’s mostly self-service for the bottles and tins which I found a preferable set-up. It felt like there was less room for judgement.
With my priorities in place, I ordered the obligatory airport pint upon entry, in this case a pint of Brooklyn Defender IPA which went down very smoothly. I then helped myself to a coffee and some of the buffet items, including the fruit, cold meats and a pancake which I grazed on while waiting on my cooked breakfast.
When it arrived, I was miffed to see my small dish only contained a single egg and a hash brown. It seemed like a miserly offering, considering the £40 price tag of the lounge. Especially since the individual breakfast items seemed to be of such poor quality.
The beans looked as if they'd been caught up in some turbulence and splattered onto the runway. The egg looked jet-lagged from after a raucous ten-hour flight with a screaming child on board.
The lone severely depressed looking hash brown looked like it needed to find the emergency exit. The plates only saving grace were the sausages and bacon - and that's because I like them well cooked. There's little I can add about the raw tomato, other than it clearly hadn't touched the grill.
'Even Gordon Ramsay could not have saved it'
With the ingredients LBA had supplied to the chef, even Gordon Ramsay could not have saved this dish.
The service was perfectly helpful. The woman in charge of the hospitality was welcoming and kept an appropriate distance which added to the calm ambience. Again, she was doing the best with what the airport had provided – an overpriced shmatte lounge in need of another face lift.
What does Leeds Bradford Airport say?
A spokesperson for Leeds Bradford Airport said: "We welcome all feedback from passengers and use this to deliver the best service possible for our customers. We recognise the demand for premium lounges at LBA and have made investments to significantly improve these services in recent years.
"As a result, we now operate multiple, competitively priced lounges, that provide a wide range of food & beverages and an enjoyable, comfortable environment for passengers.
"As part of our commitment to enhancing our lounge offerings, we’ve also partnered with the best in class third-party operator, Elior, to manage our food and beverage services. Moving forwards, we have a long-term plan to improve our lounge offering further, which will be enabled by our LBA:REGEN development and enacted as part of our Vision 2030 strategy.”
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