In January and February, I wrote reviews of Bangkok Suvarnabhumi’s Oman Air and Air France-KLM lounges. I visited both of them before my flight to Tokyo Narita in January after the Thai Air Force Children’s Day airshow. Besides these two Priority Pass lounges, I also had a chance to visit one of the many CIP Lounges at the airport.
My friend, who was flying on JAL’s flight to Haneda in business class, was directed to the lounge right across from gate G2, and so I went to that one as well to meet up with him. Coincidentally, my flight was departing from G2, so it was really convenient as well!
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Lounge Overview
The lounge has two floors, and even though each of them is listed as a separate lounge on the operator’s website, I will treat them as one here as they are interconnected.
Lower Floor
I entered the lounge through the lower floor – the third floor of the terminal. As a side note, most of the lounges are located on this floor which is one level below the departures floor.
The reception area of the lounge is designed very nicely with two small seating areas before the reception desk.
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Past the reception desk, there is a long “hallway.”
First, there is a relaxation area with sofa chairs arranged in sets of four on the right side, and the main dining area on the left side. The dining area contains both sofa chairs and regular chairs, both mostly in sets of four. The buffet is located right behind the dining area.
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On the right hand side, across from the buffet, there is an escalator connecting the two floors of the lounge.
Going further, there are the restrooms, flight information displays, and reading materials on the left side. On the right, there is an interesting business center kind of area with a couple of computers, as well as some more seating.
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Finally, at the end of the lounge, there is another seating area.
At the time of my visit, the lounge was quite packed and I had a bit of a hard time finding a seat for myself. However, that could have been due to the fact that there were two JAL flights departing around that time, and that JAL is currently reconstructing their lounge and using this one instead.
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Upper Floor
The upper floor can be either accessed from the outside through a reception or from the lower level with an escalator. I have no idea what the rules are, but at the beginning of my stay, it was possible to go on the escalators in both directions, while at the end of my stay, it was only possible to go downstairs.
The upper floor is very similar to the lower floor. If you are stepping into the lounge through the upper floor reception, there is a seating area behind it and to the right of it.
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Going to the left, there is the upper floor buffet which contained largely the same items as the lower floor one (more on that later).
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Further down, there is a similar computer station as downstairs followed by more seating. While most of the seats were sofa chairs, there was also a pair of dining tables with chairs in the back.
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Food & Drinks Selection
Since both of the floors contain largely similar selection, I am not splitting this part by floors.
The lounge featured a couple of hot, mostly chicken-based dishes. There was also one type of soup on each floor – mushroom cream soup on the upper and clear chicken soup on the lower. Finally, there were some warm pastries on booth floors, and a pancake maker on the lower one.
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On the cold side, there are some sandwiches, muffins, croissants, and so on. There are also fruit cuts and vegetables.
Finally, there are yogurts and ice cream.
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As for drinks, there is a selection of juices (guava, orange, apple), canned soda, water, and ice tea and coffee.
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Each of the floors also has a self-service alcohol counter and a coffee and tea corner.
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Overall Thoughts
At the time of my visit, the lounge was quite full which took away from its ambiance. Otherwise, the facilities were decent, and although I did not eat any of the food as I ate too much in the Oman Air and Air France-KLM lounges, it looked tasty.
However, if now that I have reviewed the three lounges, next time, I will skip this one, and head to the Air France-KLM one which, in my opinion, offers better meals. For relax, I would head to the Oman Air Lounge, assuming I would be at the airport during the lounge’s fairly limited opening hours.
If I was having a long layover, however, and I could not “overstay” the maximum length of stay at the two lounges above, the CIP Lounge would be my third place to go to.
