[SwissExPat]

Revolut have added a new benefit for Metal and Premium customers.

If you register your forthcoming flights via the app (and I did this for a few upcoming flights quite easily), if your flight is delated by more than 1 hour, they will send you a pass for a lounge in your departing airport (valid also for other passengers on your itinerary).

Revolut say they will monitor the delays and send out these passes automatically.

Look like a good benefit but will see how it actually works in the real world.

1 user thanked author for this post.

MarkCymru

[MarkCymru]

No doubt HSBC will soon offer the same benefit to those of us with HSBC Premier accounts — the pigs flying overhead in red and white will mark the occasion <G>. I do love my Revolut account….

[Chris in Makati]

It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure how well it would work in practice.

When a flight is delayed you often don’t know initially how long it’s going to be delayed for. You sometimes don’t know it’s going to be delayed at all until after you’ve got to the gate, or even until after you’ve already boarded.

It may be ok if the airline is clearly able to inform you at check-in that there will be at least an hour delay, but in my experience it doesn’t often happen that way.

[travelsforfun]

So, I think I can provide some insight into how this works in practice. I have the same LoungeKey benefit through my standard Columbus Direct travel insurance (a sister company of LoungeKey). The most annoying aspect is a really clunky website for entering the flights (and sometimes not recognising more obscure airlines) and a 24-hour cut-off for registering – but it looks like neither applies to Revolut’s offer.

Once flights are registered, the monitoring system works well, it’s pretty reliable at picking up when my flight has been delayed – but it is reliant on the airline officially confirming the 1-hour+ delay. Recently this happened several hours before departure which proved very handy – but sometimes the delay is not announced until quite close to the actual departure time.

As has been pointed out, it’s no help when the delay occurs (or is extended) after the aircraft has been boarded. There are some airports where no partner lounge exists or is inaccesible from your terminal. In the case of a very long delay, any standard time limit applicable to the particular lounge (e.g. 3 hours) will kick in. It also tends to be less useful during major disruption when almost all flights are delayed as lounge access is on the basis of available capacity.

But overall, I’ve been impressed by the service and end up getting lounge access by virtue of a delay around a couple of times a year. Indeed, one thing it has highlighted – which did surprise me – is how reliable flights tend to be (and I regularly use Heathrow…).

[SimonS1]

Interesting. I suppose Revolut probably considers that at that point most people in its premium target will already be sat in a lounge by virtue of status, travel class, or PP/similar.

Hence a good sounding benefit that has limited demand.

[travelsforfun]

Indeed, that’s true for me, most of the time I already have lounge access – and indeed last weekend, it offered me access to the third party lounge in Hannover I was already in!

But the time before, I was flying ex-Singapore and it was handy because I had a long connection and the delay was notified some hours before the BA and Qantas lounges I could normally use had opened.

I don’t have Priority Pass or equivalent so it would come in handy if faced with a long delay and flying Economy Class outside my alliance.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Mike

[Author]

Posts