Overview of the LAX United Club

The United Club at LAX is located near Gate 71A in Terminal 7. Basically, once you get through security, you will see signs for the United Club. The entrance is on the Departure level, but the actual lounge is upstairs, so you need to take the elevator up.

You can check the lounge hours on the official website. In general, it opens in time for the first UA flight of the day and closes after the last UA flight departs.

How to get in

There are several ways to access the United Club:

  • United business class or first class passengers can enter with their ticket
  • Cardholders of the Chase United Club credit card
  • Using a United Club One Time Pass

This time, we used the 2 One Time Passes that come each year with the Chase United Explorer credit card to enter the lounge. The official price of a One Time Pass is $59. However, because so many are distributed through credit cards, they have become very easy to find, and you can buy them on eBay for about $15 each (purchase link).

One thing to note is that if you are entering with a One Time Pass, they need to scan your boarding pass and then scan the club pass. So if your next flight is not on UA, you probably will not be able to get into the lounge. Of course, Terminal 7 is basically all UA flights, so most people would not come here otherwise.

United Club experience

We arrived at Terminal 7 a little over an hour before boarding, at around 9:40 am.

  • Since it was still fairly early, the bar area was pretty quiet
  • The lounge has floor-to-ceiling windows, which makes it quite pleasant, and you can directly watch the planes outside
  • There were still quite a few people, but because the lounge itself felt open and spacious, it did not seem too crowded
  • Not many people were getting breakfast yet, just a few here and there
  • Before the breakfast period ended at 10:30am, the main offerings were crackers, bread, yogurt, fruit, cereal, and similar items
  • At 10:30am, they cleared away the breakfast items and switched to lunch. Very UA-style: huge carrots and huge celery sticks! Personally, I thought the soup tasted pretty good.

Summary

Overall, the United Club at LAX felt spacious and clean, and it was not nearly as noisy as I had expected. The staff inside were also very attentive, frequently clearing tables and taking away dishes people no longer needed. The food definitely cannot compare with airport lounges in Asia, but having hot soup, free drinks, and free Wi-Fi made it a decent place to spend an hour before a flight. If you are connecting at LAX on a UA flight, it is still worth stopping in for a while.