Last week we wrote about the Blossom Lounge in Changi’s T4 surviving the recently announced cull of Plaza Premium lounges from the Priority Pass programme, effective from 1st July 2021, though as expected the Plaza Premium facility in T1 will sadly be axed from the scheme.
We also touched on Plaza Premium’s new ‘PPL Pass’ membership programme, a new scheme to give you access to these Plaza Premium lounges for an annual fee, based on your usage.
Plaza Premium has now added a little more colour on PPL Pass with an official launch announcement, setting out the programme as a strong future contender to the existing lounge access alternatives in the coming years.
Plaza Premium PPL Pass
For now, PPL Pass effectively just replaces the former Plaza Premium Lounge Gift Card.
The PPL Pass is a membership programme currently allowing access to 68 Plaza Premium Lounges. That covers most of Plaza Premiums’s 76 such facilities globally, a total that includes the brand’s ‘Plaza Premium First’ lounge collection.
It’s also worth noting that, rather unusually, the programme does not currently allow access to the Blossom Lounge at Changi T4, which is a joint venture between SATS and Plaza Premium.
While the number of lounges currently participating in the programme seems low at the moment, significant expansion is in the pipeline.
Plaza Premium is promising a huge increase in coverage to over 500 lounges worldwide in the next few years, positioning the scheme as a direct competitor to the likes of Priority Pass and DragonPass.
“The pass gives travellers direct access to over 60 Plaza Premium Lounges globally, the largest award-winning independent airport lounge network set to expand to over 500 lounges worldwide (including the Group’s own branded-lounges and airline affiliates) by 2024/25.”
Plaza Premium
That means we will almost inevitably start to see PPL Pass increasingly offered as an alternative to the other lounge access programmes with a range of credit cards, which is how most of our readers currently snag their free visits during the year when flying in Economy Class.
You may recall in 2018 how the Citi PremierMiles card announced a shift from Priority Pass for complimentary lounge visits to a (very slimmed down) DragonPass alternative, before quickly u-turning on the idea, so the banks are certainly looking for a better deal where they can find one –