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So far this year, United Airlines has announced flashy new planes and a big shake-up to its MileagePlus loyalty program — all while preparing to launch a new crop of flights to off-the-beaten-path destinations in Europe.
Still to come in 2026? Some truly enormous airport lounges.
Between now and the end of the year, the Chicago-based carrier plans to cut the ribbon on at least three new United Club facilities. One is coming to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). A second, at Dulles International Airport (IAD) near Washington, D.C., will debut in tandem with a brand-new terminal set to open by fall. At 39,000 square feet, this outpost would have been the biggest in United’s network if it weren’t for the real headliner coming by year’s end.
United plans to open a sprawling 54,000-square-foot behemoth of a lounge at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH). This Texas-size facility, which the airline offered a sneak peek of last week, should easily become America’s biggest airline-branded airport lounge once the doors open.
For a little context, it’s set to be a whopping 60% bigger than the massive Denver club the airline debuted last summer.
United’s lounges keep getting bigger — and the reason should be welcome news for the airline’s credit card holders.
Ending frustration for United credit card holders
Some of United’s most popular cobranded credit cards come with annual day passes to its lounge network.
United MileagePlus members who carry the United℠ Explorer Card (see rates and fees) get two United Club one-time passes each year.
But actually redeeming those passes for lounge visits can be easier said than done. On busy travel days, the airline often excludes day pass holders from entering its clubs in an effort to stem overcrowding.
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While perhaps necessary to keep from overwhelming its facilities, it can be an unpleasant surprise for flyers who expect at least some lounge perks as part of their card’s $150 or $350 annual fee.
Ending that disappointment, United executives say, is among the top goals for the future of the airline’s lounges.
“Every time we see that little sign outside a club that says ‘no one-day passes,’ we haven’t met the objective,” United chief commercial officer Andrew Nocella told TPG at a roundtable with journalists last month in Los Angeles. “And so we are working diligently to never see that sign — which means the clubs are not overcrowded — which means everyone gets in with their guests, and the one-day [passholders] get in.”
United CEO to staff: Build a lounge that’s ‘too big’
United certainly isn’t alone in battling overcrowding. Airline- and credit card-affiliated lounges alike have had to contend with booming membership in recent years.
That reality has led to a patchwork of access changes, depending on the lounge portfolio — from stricter guest policies at American Express to rationed annual visits at Delta Air Lines and permanent grab-and-go locations, like the one United itself debuted a year ago in Houston.
But the airline is also on a blitz to secure huge swaths of coveted airport real estate. The carrier emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with 49% more club space than it had prior to 2020, CEO Scott Kirby said.
Yet, the carrier still hasn’t met the boss’s challenge.
“I want them to build a club that is oversized. That we look at it and say, ‘That club is too big,'” Kirby said during the recent discussion. “I’ve now been told seven or eight times, ‘This one is going to be the one.’ It’s never true.”
The massive, new Houston lounge will certainly put that to the test, lapping the closest competition as the biggest United Club in its lineup. But it may not hold the mantle for long.
Another ‘even bigger’ club in the works for Dulles
Kirby revealed that United is currently planning an “even bigger” future facility for its IAD hub — bigger than the new IAH space and bigger than the other IAD club mentioned above (which is already set to open this year).
It appears that this additional IAD lounge is still in the early planning stages, and there’s no official timeline.
According to Kirby, the facility would be built as part of much-discussed renovations at the Washington-area hub. The plans, he said, call for the lounge to be along a new, proposed connector building that would link the airport’s iconic Eero Saarinen-designed main terminal with its A/B Concourse.
That connector is included in IAD’s long-range plans (which have garnered unusually strong attention from the White House in recent months).
Today, the airline operates three United Clubs at IAD, each along the airport’s C/D Concourse, as well as a premium United Polaris lounge facility. Details about this additional new club remain scarce, for now, with Kirby only promising this: “It’ll be a big club.”
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