Three Hours Early, on Purpose: Our Centurion Lounge Ritual — and the Biggest Lounges Yet Are Coming

People who know us know this about our travel days: we are at the airport three hours early, and it has almost nothing to do with the flight.

It has everything to do with the lounge.

We hold American Express Centurion access, and somewhere along the way the lounge stopped being a perk and became the first chapter of every trip. The ritual never changes: bags down, a proper drink in hand, a real meal instead of a gate-area scramble, a quiet corner where we can talk about the trip we’re about to take — or, on the way home, the one we just did. At home it’s the Centurion Lounge at LAS. On the road it’s Tom Bradley at LAX, the temporary Terminal 2 lounge at SFO, and whatever Centurion door we find at the other end. No matter where in the world we are, if there’s a Centurion Lounge, that’s where our trip begins — three hours early, on purpose, and we enjoy every minute of it.

So when American Express announced the biggest expansion of the Centurion Lounge network in its history — more than 30 lounges already, with four more openings and expansions to come — we read it the way other people read a favorite restaurant’s new menu. Closely, and with plans.

The centerpiece is the one that made us sit up: Newark Liberty International Airport, Terminal A, opening in 2027 — at more than 30,000 square feet across two floors, the largest Centurion Lounge American Express has ever built. And because we are, before anything, two people who travel to eat and drink, it’s the details that got us. There’s a coffee and wellness bar doing seasonal specialty drinks, smoothies, and avocado toast. There’s a Specialty Bar built as a modern spin on New Jersey’s iconic diner culture — diner culture, given the full cocktail-bar treatment. And there’s a Pine Barrens–inspired Terrace Bar serving gelato, Italian pastries, and Italian-inspired cocktails. That is not airport food. That is a place telling its own local story through what’s in the glass and on the plate, and it is exactly the kind of storytelling we chase everywhere else we go.

The rest of the expansion reads like our future itineraries. London Heathrow gets a second Centurion Lounge in Terminal 5 in 2028, more than 9,000 square feet inspired by the city’s cultures and history. Philadelphia’s lounge doubles in size in 2027 into a two-story space hung with work by local artists. And Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental nearly triples in 2028 to more than 23,000 square feet, with dining that rotates through Houston’s culinary traditions and Gulf Coast flavors and a bar pouring Houston-inspired craft cocktails — a revamp we already know we’ll build a layover around. Amsterdam’s lounge, freshly opened with nods to that city’s café culture, and a Boston Logan lounge planned for 2029 round out a map we’re happily watching fill in.

American Express Travel president Audrey Hendley says the company keeps finding ways to meet the growing demand for these lounges. From our side of the lounge door, we can tell her why the demand is there. A great lounge changes the emotional math of a travel day. The airport stops being something to endure and becomes somewhere to be — somewhere with a menu, a bar program, a sense of place. Three hours in that room is not waiting. It’s the trip, started early and started well.

So yes: we’ll keep arriving three hours ahead, boarding passes ready, appetites ready. And when Newark opens its two floors in 2027, look for us there — early, of course. We wouldn’t dream of being late for the lounge.

Source: Travel + Leisure, “American Express Is Opening Its Largest-ever Centurion Lounge at This U.S. Airport” (Oct. 8, 2026).

Photo: American Express Centurion Lounge, JFK Terminal 4, by ajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.