Getting into a Delta Sky Club these days requires waiting in line like its the U2 Joshua Tree tour in 1987 or a Best Buy Black Friday doorbuster. At New York JFK terminal 4 things are even worse: the China National Highway 110 traffic jam of 2010, which is to say being a Sky Club member in 2022 is akin to Beatlemania – or living your life queueing as though you’re French.
Delta customers have clearly gotten the word that if they want a seat in the club, they need to show up at the airport early, even before the Sky Clubs open. One reader reports that there was already a line at 4:30 a.m. when they cleared the New York LaGuardia TSA checkpoint on Thursday – for a club that starts letting in passengers at 5 a.m.
Here’s a shot they took at 4:48 a.m.:
I have to wonder, though, what is the point of a club you have to line up for it is not Studio 54, and you’re not going home with anyone or getting excellent molly?
It seems to me this photo captures just how many passengers Delta has at LaGuardia, when you consider the subset that are club members, and then subset of those willing to stand in line before 5 a.m. just to get in. Doesn’t this photo make the case for the American Airlines-JetBlue Northeast Alliance to introduce some competition there?
Someone really should start a line-sitting service and sell spots. Sure they’d need to buy a ticket, but with no change fees the same ticket could be used by each line-minder day after day as a credit towards the next one.
There are apparently line sitting services at the Russia-Kazakhstan border for people fleeing Putin’s war and conscription. But line sitters aren’t abiding by contracts and taking higher bids as they get to the front, according to reports. So the challenge is ensuring line-sitters making a credible commitment to stay bought.
My advice: if you have interns, buy them a refundable ticket and send them to the airport to wait in line for you. That’s the whole point of having an intern, right?
