32-year-old Brittany Romano had not yet decided to start her own long-distance ROM-COM in September last year.
There she met Matt Harrington, 35, a school teacher from Pasadena, California. He spies quickly for security, and when she stops by the lounge for her normal routine, “take a shot and use the toilet” – he sends her a tequila shot. The two then jog to catch the plane.
Romano, an entertainment journalist who lives in New York, thought that would happen, but Harrington asked the flight attendant to switch seats and sit with her. More tequila shots followed during the six-hour flight. The pair still talks every day.
There's always been something magical about airport love stories. “Airports are lawless,” said Natalie Stocklett, a Mexico City-based author and designer, who once cheated on a man she met in the Iberia lounge at Madrid airport. “I'm sure I can drink a cocktail at 8am, wear embarrassingly compressed socks, stare at the departure committee delusionally, change flights and start a new life in Paris. (Her lounge has popped out, but at least she still has a 'good airport story'.
But airport lounges, calm, semi-exclusive spaces away from the waning reality of modern air travel, are increasingly on the trajectory of millennial romance, hoping to find soulmates themselves, dressed early before the flight, or at least finding fresh romance. It's a new, “I'm looking for a financial man.”
“A romantic airport would think I'll find a husband who loves future travel in one,” wrote one Tiktok user. “I'm waiting mysteriously in the Emirates Lounge, waiting for my future husband to wipe me out of my feet while I live in my film,” another user captioned her clip. “Can I ask for a 'single lounge' designated at the airport?” a third asked.
New York investors, 38-year-old Grace Ma and Delta and the fanatics at the American Express Centurion Lounge, said the lounge is a new member-only club and is less intimidating and less intimidating, but has become a major spot for dating. “Meeting like-minded people rather than going to a random city bar is a more targeted place,” she said. “People with access to a nice airport lounge may already have checked some boxes for you, but that can be psychologically comfortable. For example, they are willing to spend money to get in, they have travel situations and are flying certain classes of airfares.”
Rachel Childress, 32, a server at Delta One Lounge at Boston's Logan Airport, met his current partner when he came as a guest. In addition to the luxury the lounge experience offers, it lowers the hurdle to meeting someone, she said.
“There's no obligation to meet anyone either. It makes the connection even more thrilling,” she said. “And you're thinking how crazy your path crossed with someone? What was the series of events that you had to happen to meet them?
“In-flight and Admiral Club meetings are common,” said Jennifer Higginbotham, 41, director of premium services operations strategy and support at American Airlines. The airline held a wedding at the Nashville Lounge. (Higinbottam's husband proposed to her at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, so she is an airport love story expert.)
Claude Russel, who manages Delta's lounge experience, said the careers' public relations team has an action plan to manage lounge decorations, suggestions that will help promote proposals.
Kishshana Palmer has got a full experience. Palmer, 45, met cute in the Delta Lounge at Terminal B at Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the summer of 2023. Her boyfriend proposed in the same lounge a year later. “All of a sudden, team members come out of all four corners of the globe,” she said. “They let me reapply the lipstick and then say, 'Please try again.' But he broke things before the aviation-themed wedding took place.
Palmer maintains hope. “I still feel like I'm trying to find my boo, perhaps in another airport lounge,” she said.
Delta also pulled out all the stops last year when 35-year-old Ryan Shev proposed to Philip Tuzinski, 37, at the Delta Sky Club in LaGuardia. The two are self-proclaimed “air nerds” in New York, and their romance idea is to watch the plane take off and sit in the airline's lounge with cocktails.
It's not a long time here
All the promises of eternal love are going well, but not everyone is looking for commitment. Sometimes you can get away. Singles from the Yoro era chalk up trends into two things. There's rarely any loss. You are both soon.
Cyrus Forest, 29, a creative director in Los Angeles, was running through the Labour at the Delta Sky Club at Miami Airport when he saw a cute guy from the corner of his eyes. They exchanged shy smiles and nods, but that was when Mr. Forest left the terminal at the second end to go to his gate. “I'm lined up as I feel the tap on my shoulder and turn to find the guy. I'm laughing right away, but amazed that he found me. My group is called and I say I have to go, but I feel the urge to lean towards the kiss. “I listened to the plane and listened to my ears.”
Forest received the man's contact information, but “I decided to leave it at one magical moment at Miami Airport.”
New York writer Benjamin Schmidt, 29, has opened the Grindle app at the Delta Lounge in San Francisco and agreed to meet up with games at the lounge bar. “We went back to New York together, holding modest and playful hands on the plane and having a flirty conversation,” he said. And that's over. “It felt like I had borrowed a boyfriend that day,” Schmidt said.
Romano pointed out that airports offer little rules of action, and that lounges provide the perfect environment for casual dating. “They have better lighting, free drinks, and 'What's your bio?' clumsy,” she said. “The best part? If it's not a match, one of you actually has to leave.”
People long for something real
The trend in this lounge is more than ROM-COM fantasy or the nostalgia of millennials to dissociate from reality. Travel experts and frequent travelers predict that airline lounges will begin to play a much larger role in people's romantic lives for one reason. The dating app culture backfired.
“Application culture is designed to opt out in addition to being gamification,” Palmer said. When you meet someone in person, you start looking for something in common, she adds. “And here, the lounge is yours, what you have in common.”
This has led to 30-year-old Iñigo Merino launching a dating app targeting flyers. “We're just constantly online and there's a lot of digital burnout. We're being fired up. And we have a love-hate relationship with dating apps,” said Merino, founder and CEO of the new app that lets you connect with users and connect to flights in airport lounges.
Wingle users can enter flight details and flag the location when they arrive at the airport. Like a lounge, when the plane takes off, the seat map is illuminated with other users, allowing users to start chatting. And when the plane lands, the chat disappears. “So what happens in the air will stay in the air or share contact information so that we can continue the conversation in real life,” Merino said.
When people are traveling, they say, “Because they're in a different way of thinking, you can make more meaningful connections. That means you're trapped in this metal tube with up to 300 people.
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