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| Transborder Aspire Lounge Entrance - Photo courtesy of Swissport |
To start our latest vacation the Rewards Canada family recently visited the new
Transborder Calgary Airport Aspire Lounge.
This lounge opened up on October 31, 2016 along with the entire new
International terminal at YYC. This is the only transborder lounge in
YYC as the old Rocky Mountain Lounge is now closed and is one of four
lounges available in Calgary. The other three are the Aspire Lounge
International, Chinook Lounge (Domestic) and Air Canada Maple Leaf
Lounge.
The Lounge
The new lounge has a much more open feel than the old Rocky Mountain
lounge with lots of seating in booth areas, bar seats and bench seating.
The lounge also has some loungers in semi enclosed areas where you can
watch TV. The seats in the booth areas all featured cubbies for small
carry on items and more importantly individual plugs for charging all
your electronics!
Here are some general photos I took of the lounge:
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| At the check in desk! |
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| Middle of the lounge seating with bar stools to the back |
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| These are the seats with the cubbies and plug ins to charge your electronics |
Food & Drinks
Outside of the peace and quiet of lounges the biggest draw for many to
business class lounges are the food and drink options. Previously at the
Rocky Mountain lounge (and in the current Chinook lounge) the food
options are quite limited, in particular the hot food options which was
usually just soup. The good news that the new transborder Aspire lounge
has hot food options! When we arrived the options were chicken fingers,
grilled tomatoes, fried rice and carrots. The bad news was the food
wasn't very good. Later on the tomatoes were replaced with hashbrowns
but we didn't try those out. We ended grabbing some food from Burger
King (yes, BK - don't judge) to consume in the lounge. Perhaps we were
just unlucky with the food that day but if not hopefully it will be
something they work on and provide some better hot food options. The
drink options were decent with several beers and hard alcohol options
available along with wine. For non-alcoholic drinks there were your
usual cans of soda, bottles of Juice and water (still & sparkling)
on tap. As a reminder then bring an empty water bottle to fill up if you
used to be used to taking water bottles out of the old lounge to your
plane!
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| The hot food options |
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| The alcohol options - there is also wine but not in this picture |
Access
Entering the lounge was easy as we simply provided our J Class Air
Canada boarding passes. Flying AC Business Class you can also choose to
go the Maple Leaf lounge first but you'll have to clear security first
for that lounge and when coming back for Transborder you'll have to go
through U.S. customs and then security again. Kind of a pain hence AC's
access to this lounge for their Transborder flights. Had we not been in
business class we would have reverted to the other options our family
has and those are
The Platinum Card from American Express (which provides access for the whole family),
Priority Pass (from The Platinum Card) or at the very least our
Diners Club Club Rewards MasterCard
but the last would only have covered 2 of the 5 of us that were
travelling. You can pretty much access the lounge with any lounge
program as mentioned but also Dragon Pass or you can buy single entries.
To find out more about all the different lounge options read and
bookmark Rewards Canada's
Guide to Business Class lounge access
Thoughts
Overall this new transborder lounge is very nice, much better than the
old Rocky Mountain Lounge. We look forward to using it lots and also
can't wait to try out the International lounge as well. We just hope the
hot food options get a working to something better!
Have you visited this lounge? What do you think of it? What do you like and what do you think could be done better?
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For the best access to this lounge no matter what airline you are
flying or what fare class and want to have your family get access look
no further than The Platinum Card from American Express:
New Platinum Card® Cardmembers, earn 50,000 Bonus Membership Rewards®
points by spending $1,000 in purchases in the first three months of
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• Platinum members are automatically enrolled in the Membership
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• The Platinum Card gives you access to exceptional lounge
benefits such as the Canadian Platinum Lounge Benefit, Airport Club
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• You will also have access to elevated status with many Hotel
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• You can use Apple Pay on your eligible device to pay for
goods and services at participating American Express contactless
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• American Express is not responsible for maintaining or
monitoring the accuracy of information on this website. For full details
and current product information click the Apply now link.
• *As a Charge Card, the balance must always be paid in full
each month. 30% annual interest rate applies to balances not paid in
full.
Conditions apply
