A LoyaltyLobby reader alerted us yesterday about a significant Priority Pass lounge change at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport from April 1, 2025.
As I had a long transit through Bangkok today (writing this from the QR lounge), I had time to visit all the affected lounges (Oman Air, Turkish, and Air France—KLM) except the Thai one.
You can access Priority Pass here.
What appears to be happening on April 1st is that none of the airline-operated lounges will be part of Priority Pass, and based on the talks I have had with the multiple staff here at the airport, it appears to be AOT mandated.
We have contacted both AOT (Airports of Thailand) and the Collinson Group, the company behind the Priority Pass, to clarify what is happening, but we haven’t heard back from them by the publication of this piece.
Coral and Miracle lounges are still available through Priority Pass from April 1st, but they are not generally of the same quality as the lounges being purged.
These Coral and Miracle lounges are owned and operated by Thai companies, while these airline lounges are not (perhaps less tea money going around to grease things). These purged lounges are pretty close to each other.
Priority Pass Lounges Affected:
There is a note on two of these four lounge pages on the Priority Pass app that they no longer welcome PP customers from April 1st, but this applies to the other two as well, based on the talks I had.
Bangkok Lounges:
Priority Pass customers can access many Miracle and Coral lounges, but these tend to be inferior.
Conclusion
We don’t know what level of exclusivity agreement these Miracle and Coral lounges have with the AOT and if allowing Priority Pass members to enter these airline lounges somehow violates them.
It might help them to be Thai-owned when dealing with the Airport of Thailand, which may have a favorable view of them compared to foreign operators.
However, I am not sure how some of these lounges (Oman, Turkish, and Air France – KLM) would be sustainable without some business from outside passengers, as there are not enough flights to keep them operating throughout the day. Of course, they can start selling lounge capacity directly to airlines like Miracle and Coral already do.
Malaysia Airlines, with whom my flight out of Bangkok is, preferred lounge here is Miracle. At the same time, you can also access JAL, Cathay Pacific, and Qatar Airways lounges; the last two are far superior compared to what Miracle and Coral have available. (I went to Qatar Premium Lounge after visiting those three lounges for this piece.)
Let’s hope that this is only a temporary change and that these airline lounges will soon again be allowed to provide access to various entry programs such as Priority Pass.
