REVIEW: Plaza Premium Lounge, London Heathrow T2

Usually when embarking on long haul trips in premium cabins, on a new carrier, I have weeks of anticipatory buildup.

In this instance though I had barely enough time to gather my thoughts after the previous week’s RTW.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to try Singapore Air for the first time. Singapore is a carrier whose name has long been synonymous with excellence and I was very eager to see if the airline could deliver.

Moreover, there still haven’t been a huge number of reports on the new Business Class product – featured on the latest delivery of Boeing 777-300ERs (better known as the 77WN). When you see a trip report with a limited number of photos it is almost like a teaser, a trailer, it builds curiosity within you.

I went to the airport straight from the office, nothing unusual there, I always do my best to maximise holidays with night flights. However, given that this trip was only going to last 5 days, I packed a single carry on for a long-haul to Asia.

I love the new Terminal 2 at Heathrow. The sculpture that greets you at the entrance is absolutely phenomenal. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you’re going to commission artwork for a new airport terminal this is a fundamentally superior way to spend the money than the Qatari bear.

I’m not going to lie; as I strode up to the Business Class check in with my bizarre itinerary, issued on El Salvadoran ticket stock by an airmiles program based in Colombia, with the intent of flying to China on a Singaporean airline (and requiring a Russian Visa in my Spanish passport) – with nothing but hand luggage, I felt supremely badass.

At this point in time there was no dedicated Singapore Airlines lounge in Heathrow and I had tried the LH, AC, UA and Plaza options in the past. I already knew which lounge was best and headed straight there – Plaza Premium. It was a bit of a relief knowing that I could actually lounge in the lounge as opposed to rushing through for some action paced gorging and photographing  ?

The Lounge entrance

The bar area – where I generally choose to sit

The main seating area

DIY Thai Noodle soup

Noodle soup condiments

The carb counter

The ubiquitous orange Indian goo, a feature of all LHR T2 lounges

G&T, poppadoms and a DIY Thai Chilli noodle soup – it doesn’t take much more than this to make me happy!

The Plaza Premium lounge has a very comfortable atmosphere. If you want noise and action you can have it. If you want quiet you can have that too. There is a very large variety of food and drink, including plenty of snack items and bottles/ cans that can be taken on board with you. Power sockets are plentiful, the showers are powerful and everything is clean and very tastefully designed.

If I was designing a third party lounge, I don’t think I’d be able to come up with a huge number of improvements.