The departure of the Korean airline Asiana from Star Alliance This coming 16 December will result in collateral damage for the airline alliance. Despite the importance of Seoul Incheon airport in Asian air traffic, the alliance will no longer have access to the Asiana lounge, which is open to all its premium members.
Hence the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the airport authority to remedy this absence as quickly as possible.
At the signing ceremony, Ambar Franco, Vice President of Customer Experience at Star Alliance, stated: « Incheon International Airport is a major gateway for Star Alliance, with several of our member airlines operating there. This partnership with IIAC demonstrates our shared commitment to providing our customers with a consistently high-quality experience. We are proud to establish a Star Alliance lounge at one of the world's leading airports and look forward to welcoming our member airlines' customers to it soon.".
From 16 December, the «new» lounge will welcome passengers from the 14 airlines operating 29 destinations out of Incheon. For it is more than likely that this is, in fact, Asiana's current lounge, which will simply undergo a rebrand. Located in Terminal 1 on the western concourse of the terminal building, the lounge will offer the advantage of being immediately operational for Business Class passengers and those with priority status, simply bearing the Star Alliance logo.
The new lounge will thus become the seventh Star Alliance lounge in the world, following those already opened at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle, Los Angeles International, Guangzhou Baiyun, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Amsterdam airports. In addition, eligible customers of Star Alliance member airlines have access to more than 1,000 airport lounges worldwide.
