Review: The beautiful Spitfire Lounge at Southampton Airport

Who says an airport operated lounge has to be awful? Southampton Airport prove this isn’t the case in spades with their quite frankly impressive and gorgeous Spitfire Lounge.

After experiencing boring lounges such as the Dublin Airport DAA Lounge and the equally disappointing La Croix du Sud Lounge at Toulouse Airport, this was a total breath of fresh air. I wish they could all be this pleasant!

Getting To The Spitfire Lounge

Southampton Airport is a breeze to get through, as it mainly services regional flights operated by small aircraft. Once you bounce quickly through security into the departure lounge, you head up the stairs and along some corridors to the lounge itself.

You can pay for access on the airport’s website which costs £25 for adults, £12 for children aged 6-11 while under 5s go free. You can also use DragonPass or Priority Pass, or gain access by flying business class.

Lounge Decor

There are two friendly staff servicing the lounge, and once inside you’re greeted by two spaces. The main lounge has seating and all the drinks and so on, plus there’s a back room with more seating.

Artwork on the walls evokes Southampton’s maritime history, with bold paintings depicting boats and such. In the back room, there are large photographs of planes, because it is an airport after all!

Food and Drink

Once you enter, you are given a lounge menu. At breakfast when I visited, there was a bacon bap, a sausage bap, a vegetarian sausage bap, mixed berry cereal, granola and yoghurt. There are also a selection of Danish. I asked what the attendant’s favourite was and he said he usually had both sausage and bacon on a single bap, so I had that plus the Danish as I do like sweets.

The food was cheerfully delivered and was warm and delicious so I devoured it all. Those wanting to drink have plenty of options, however I just had water on this visit while admiring the decor. There are windows at one end, but you can’t see much outside, though it does provide some nice natural light.

Departures and Wall Art

There are not a huge amount of departures from the airport, which meant there were not many people in the lounge. There were perhaps 10 to 15 people at most and it was nice and quiet.

Each space features a TV on the wall which was playing news during the visit. Eventually I noticed my flight was boarding, so I headed back downstairs and onto the bus which took me to my plane.

Overall Thoughts

It was an absolute pleasure to visit the Spitfire Lounge. The whole experience was one of comfort and tranquility with relaxing seating, pleasant decor and an overall feeling of quiet.

Both staff members were really friendly and helpful, which added to the experience. All in all, I really enjoyed it and given the opportunity I would choose to fly out of Southampton Airport a lot more. By the way, a Spitfire is a famous World War II British fighter aircraft, in case you didn’t know.

What do you think of the Spitfire Lounge? Have you been here before? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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