Our Experience Of The Aspire Lounge At Newcastle Airport

Ahead of a family holiday to Copenhagen, we upgraded our airport experience with a first ever visit to an airport lounge. This is my review of our experience at the Aspire Lounge at Newcastle Airport.

Despite travelling quite a lot over the last few years, I’ve never really looked into lounge access at airports mainly thinking that the price was out of reach or it probably wouldn’t be worth it given the short time you spend at an airport pre-flight. However, now that I have children, you’re always looking out for ways to ‘level up’ your travel days to make them as stress-free as possible and that’s when a light bulb clicked in me. What if, instead of trying to grab something from WH Smith combined with a quick but expensive bite to eat and coffee at a packed restaurant combined with trying to find somewhere to perch whilst we wait for our gate announcement, you could just proceed straight to a quiet and relaxing lounge with comfy seats and tables waiting for you, wouldn’t that be better?

So, on a trip to Copenhagen, we were finally able to spend just over an hour in the Aspire Lounge at Newcastle Airport albeit far less than the three hours you’re allocated. Unfortunately, Storm Floris was causing all kinds of chaos as were a troop of Scouts ahead of us in the baggage drop off queue – don’t you know we have a lounge to get to!

In this post, I’ll share a review of the Aspire Lounge and hopefully our experience will help you make up your own mind as to whether to visit ahead of your own trip!

Our visit to the Aspire Lounge at Newcastle Airport was provided by Holiday Extras however all views, as always, are entirely my own.

THE ASPIRE LOUNGE AT NEWCASTLE AIRPORT

We found the Aspire Lounge once we’d made it through security, past Duty Free and down the escalators as though you were heading to the gates. It was a great time to be heading into the lounge as everywhere we’d normally spend time before our flight was jam-packed and people were sitting on the floor wherever they could find space.

We had a warm welcome at the lounge’s reception, given a brief explanation of how things worked, before we were straight into a completely different world. There were plenty of tables available and so we picked one furthest away from everyone else so as not to destroy their peace with our two little ones!

So, what do you get within the Aspire Lounge?

Firstly, there’s complimentary Wi-Fi which is needed as I didn’t get any signal – it’s not the fastest but it will do for any last minute research you need to do or for catching up on emails. There are plenty of plugs too for charging your devices which is always handy.

The main selling point of any airport lounge is obviously its food and drink selection; you’re coming here and paying the price what you expect to be high quality food and beverage options.

Firstly, in terms of the food, there’s complimentary hot food & snacks served in the standard buffet format. We visited during the afternoon so there were two main meal options, pasta and aubergine curry, alongside a selection of DIY salad options, soup, bread rolls, garlic bread as well as cheese and crackers. It wasn’t necessarily an unbelievable selection of food but I made it work and Evelyn did eat quite a bit of pasta, cheese and garlic bread. As far as I could see there were no dessert options available at least at the time we visited save for fruit and a few biscuits.

There’s a fully stocked bar with staff which provides complimentary draft beer, cocktails & wine – it works just like an ordinary bar. Thankfully, we visited at a relatively quiet time whilst Storm Floris was causing all manner of disruption, which meant that we could walk straight up to the bar and order a bottle of beer without having to wait. I have however read reviews that, when it’s busy, it’s a little chaotic with long queues just to get a drink. The good news is for those that aren’t after something alcoholic, soft drinks are self-serve and there’s tea and coffee too. The coffee isn’t the best, it’s just from a machine, but the joy is having one or two in relative peace and quiet. I think I proper mixed and matched despite only having access to the lounge for about an hour and a half in the end – beer, coffee and Pepsi max never went down so well!

There is a separate area, that’s teased to you from within the Aspire Lounge, the Suite by Aspire which is adults only, with table service, premium food and drink options as well as great views across the airfield. Parts of it are reserved entirely for Emirates fliers and I think KLM/Air France too but, if you’re all about the luxurious treatment, this might be the one for you!

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In terms of pricing, for the Aspire Lounge at Newcastle Airport, you’re looking at approximately between £38 and £45 per person including over 2’s. Infants under 2 are free of charge. I’ve done a quote for a family of four, with a flight in a few weeks time, and we’d be paying £125.97 for 3 of us, with Elise free of charge – that’s £41.99 each. It’s quite good value for the adults as we could probably get our money’s worth if we were able to use the full three hours allocated but for children, probably not. Outside of the lounge, we often would spend around £50 alone on one drink each and a bit of food so it’s not necessarily that out of reach for all of the benefits you get – nothing beats having an ‘area’ that’s yours to relax pre-flight!

Holiday Extras

As I mentioned above, our access to the Aspire Lounge was kindly provided to us by Holiday Extras as was our car parking at Newcastle Airport. Holiday Extras is a great site, one that we use regularly as a family, as you can purchase all of those ‘extras’ that tag onto your actual holiday. It’s hard enough settling on and finally booking your holiday itself before having to come to think about parking at the airport, airport hotels, transfers, lounge passes, car hire – all of those things can cause more stress when coming to plan your trip away and thankfully Holiday Extras takes the hassle away completely. One place to sit down and book all of those additional yet crucial parts of a holiday – if you sign up via this link, you’ll get exclusive email discounts of up to 15% off.

That wraps up my review of the Aspire Lounge at Newcastle Airport which I hope you’ve enjoyed and perhaps has helped make your own mind up as to whether you wish to upgrade your airport experience. If you have any questions at all, feel free to leave me a comment below and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.