Airport lounges are getting so crowded that the crowding itself is now the biggest factor driving down customer satisfaction, according to J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Airport Lounge Satisfaction Study, which found nearly half of travelers describe their most-used lounge as moderately or severely crowded.
Key Points
- 46% of lounge visitors say their go-to lounge is usually moderately or severely crowded, per J.D. Power’s survey of 2,991 travelers conducted April through June 2026.
- Satisfaction scores fall off a cliff with crowding: lounges rated “not at all crowded” scored 833 out of 1,000, versus just 589 for lounges rated “severely crowded,” a 244-point gap.
- American Express Centurion Lounge and Capital One Lounge tied for the top overall score at 771, followed by Chase Sapphire Lounge at 764, according to Business Travel News‘ coverage of the study.
- Delta Air Lines’ Sky Club led airline-run lounges at 763 points, against an industrywide average of 732.
The crowding problem is partly self-inflicted by what makes lounges appealing in the first place. J.D. Power found 45% of travelers visit lounges specifically to escape crowded terminals, and 39% go in because food and drinks in the terminal itself are overpriced. As more travelers hold credit cards with lounge access as a perk, that same crowd-escape motivation is pulling more people into a limited number of rooms, and the lounges are absorbing demand they weren’t necessarily built for.
“The airport lounge has become an oasis for travelers, but that oasis can sometimes become” overrun when demand outpaces capacity, J.D. Power’s hospitality practice lead Andrea Stokes said in the study’s release. Despite the crowding complaints, the underlying product still tests well when travelers can actually get a seat: 52% rated food and beverage quality as better than expected, and 77% described lounge staff as welcoming.
That gap between “the product is good” and “the experience is crowded” is the real story in this year’s data. Staff performance backs that up: 77% of travelers described lounge employees as welcoming, 52% called them happy and 51% considered them knowledgeable, according to J.D. Power’s figures. Complimentary food and beverage also tested well, with 52% of visitors rating it better than expected and just 4% rating it worse. None of that changes what happens once the room fills up.
What the study doesn’t spell out is why crowding has gotten this bad this fast, but the trend lines aren’t hard to guess at: premium travel credit cards have spent the past few years marketing lounge access as a headline perk, and more cardholders chasing the same limited square footage means the rooms that used to feel like an escape now feel like another line. The fix implied by J.D. Power’s own numbers isn’t better food or nicer furniture, those scores are already strong, it’s more physical space and tighter capacity controls at the door, particularly at the high-traffic hubs where card-driven access has expanded faster than the lounges themselves have.
