When most airlines update their business and first class lounges, they go the whole hog: shut it down in whole or in part, gut it, reopen it looking entirely different. Not so the much-loved and now-twenty year-old Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in London Heathrow’s terminal 3.
Virgin has just opened the latest iteration of its incremental lounge improvement strategy, where the airline updates key parts of the space — a perennial favourite that is still regularly ranked among the world’s best business class lounges — while keeping what passengers love about it.
This time round, it’s a fairly big bang for Virgin’s buck, with a revamp of the long gallery area behind the main bar, a brand new Royal Box VIP area, a pair of work pods, pop-up wellness options, and changes to the TV area that Virgin still, frankly, rather over-eggs as “The Cinema”.
Virgin invited The Up Front in to tour the updated spaces just after it opened (with a paid ticket on another airline, passing through terminal 3), and as a Clubhouse habitué of almost twenty years, and in the context of the airline’s forthcoming massive expansion of premium capacity, join me inside.
The Royal Box allows Virgin to offer VIPs and celebs their own special — and very Virgin — private area
Let’s start at the top.
Virgin’s Upper Class has long been the purview of the UK and US glitterati: the onboard experience since the Virgin Upper Class Suites in 2003 has been more private than BA’s 2000 and 2006 forwards/backwards products, the Upper Class Wing car dropoff and private checkin zone with its own security lane at Heathrow feels a bit like flying private, and Virgin has long been competitive on key celebrity-heavy routes like New York and LA.
From its establishment in the 80s, the airline’s “Cool Britannia” branding, and the very Virgin splash of glam — sometimes on what can feel like an otherwise relatively average hard product, especially on A330ceo and 787 aircraft — has had a unique attraction.
From the late 90s on, it also helped that Virgin Upper Class was at the forefront of business class, introducing the first angled lie-flat seat, J2000, in 1999, quickly followed by the first direct aisle access herringbone in 2003, the Upper Class Suite. That Virgin had no first class product to need to differentiate certainly helped here.
But what Virgin had been missing at Heathrow was a VIP space between the Upper Class Wing and the aircraft.
Enter the Royal Box, a new space in the far corner of the Clubhouse along a red carpet and behind a velvet rope. Never let it be said that Virgin doesn’t know how to make celebs feel like celebs.
A velvety U-shaped red sofa surrounds a small table, with sheer red curtains adding softness, intimacy and a private-room-at-a-swanky-London-bar sort of feel.
The side tables and bookshelf are full of Virgin memorabilia, knick-knacks, tchotchkes and bric-a-brac — and all of it genuinely fabulous.
A 1993 note from Princess Diana to Richard Branson, and a shot of England’s Rose in the iconic Fly Virgin Atlantic sweatshirt featuring the Flying Lady nose art, which the airline also sells as a limited-edition reproduction? Yep. A very 1990s photo of the man in the early Virgin 747 economy class he reportedly wanted to humorously name “Riff-Raff”? Absolutely.
Photos of Virgin-adjacent Brits so famous they became mononyms, like Princess Di: Dame Viv (Westwood) with Sir Richard, snaps of Sir Elton (John), (David) Bowie, and Geri (“Ginger Spice” Halliwell-Horner), plus Patsy and Eddie from Ab Fab? Of course, sweetie darling.
It’s hard to think of another airline whose brand equity is so strong, and whose awareness of it is so keen, that they’d be this bold in self-branding their VIP area.
Virgin makes the most of the brilliant views with gilded opera glasses and an actual honest-to-goodness telescope, as well as a small guide to the pin-up “icons” on their aircraft noses, including the famous Flying Lady.
On the low coffee table you’ll find the full Clubhouse menu, a note that a bucket of Champagne is already on your way — no need to even scan a QR code like the rest of the lounge — and even a secret, deliciously balanced Royal Box cocktail, the Drama Queen.
But pull the table apart and you’ll find it slides open to become the Cabinet of Curiosities, a whimsical delight revealing nostalgic sweets and posh chocolate.
The space is incredibly effective — and obviously created by designers who have such an understanding of the Virgin brand’s uniquely successful blend of tongue-in-cheek playfulness, British luxury, pure camp, and splash of glam.
The Gallery unifies the former hair salon with the quiet seating space area behind the bar
Along the Clubhouse’s longest wall is The Gallery, ahead of you as you walk in, and this is perhaps the biggest change in the main lounge.
I remember fondly when this used to be a hair salon — complimentary for passengers! — where one could get a trim to look fresh before the flight.
With the massive windows looking out onto the gate apron tarmac, it was, to my mind, the salon with the best view in the world, half-split from the main lounge behind the bar by angled plate glass windows.
Without the salon, and indeed in the non-salon space beforehand, this space felt a little unloved and certainly not as glam as the rest of the lounge.
That’s now changed — and indeed was so popular on the busy weekday lunchtime I visited that snapping some photos without other passengers in frame was quite tricky.
The aesthetic is a mixture of modern and classic, and works really well as a semi-separated area of the main lounge.
It is, to an extent, very right-now, with the “Miami-ish Roaring Twenties art deco” trend at its peak, and I do wonder how it will age given the number of airlines also leaning into this aesthetic.
But the integration with the rest of the Clubhouse, the unusual artwork, and the use of the signature Virgin reds, as well as a bit of design sensitivity — plus the ability to add in relatively easy changes via a swap of the statement furniture pieces — makes a lot of sense.
So do the two AC power and two USB sockets (one -A, one -C) at each table, even the ones not along the walls.
I did note the very clever use of the sound-dampening fabric panels on the outer wall behind the artwork: this is smart attention to acoustic detail in what was previously quite an echoey space thanks to the hard surfaces.
Improvements to work pods, cinema area and pop-up wellness areas all add functionality, and enable Virgin to evolve the lounge space-by-space
Speaking of acoustics, Virgin is putting some of the “business” back into its business lounge with its two noise-isolated Studio work pods, named for Virgin Records studios The Townhouse and The Manor.
It’s fantastic to see an airline recognising that Teams calls are a necessary evil of the modern world, that having them in the main lounge area is deeply irritating… and that there’s certainly some marketing value in a signature backdrop that allows attendees to naturally drop a bit of “oh yeah, I’m in the Virgin lounge, it’s great” marketing.
Back in the main lounge, the TV space that Virgin calls The Cinema still feels like this is an area looking for a purpose. It used to be some low pre-reclined armchairs in front of the two TVs — which ten years ago we might have called “big screen” but now honestly just look like the size of TV that people well-off to be flying Upper Class might have in their living rooms or media rooms at home.
Now, there are low blue armchairs with ottomans, plus an undulating S-shaped sofa series, but the TVs were just set to sports and sports news channels when I was in the lounge and there was a whopping one person on their there while the rest of the lounge was full.
Would this be better as a thematic extension of the Royal Box, or even something like an afternoon tea space — given that so many of Virgin’s flights, both eastbound and westbound, depart between lunch and dinner — that could turn into a cocktail area for later flights?
Maybe it buzzes up during live events, but Sky Sports’ interview with golf pros didn’t seem to be much of a draw to the Virgin crowd. Giving over this much of what is a space-constrained lounge to a TV zone has always felt a little odd to me, not least because a cinema zone would theoretically benefit from a darker, inside area of the lounge, while this is light, bright and something of a thoroughfare.
That inner area, to the right as you enter, is now made up of a wellness zone that includes a space with dimly lit snoozing sofas, plus pop-up wellbeing experiences for the spring. On offer are Somadome light therapy and guided meditation pods, plus a temporary Secret Spa with massages, facials, manicures and so on.
Virgin is very much back on the glam train, but as it grows its business cabins, it will need more space
Other spaces within the Clubhouse have also seen a bit of a glowup, including the booth space on the far left of the lounge that used to be a library work zone, but now has a feature wall with classic black-and-white cartoons, caricatures and illustrations, including of the “icon” successors to the Flying Lady mascot.
The obvious next questions are about the upstairs loft area and the rooftop space that’s a floor above that, not least because Virgin is adding an extra third of business capacity on its forthcoming aircraft refits to meet “insatiable demand for premium travel”.
The rooftop has long been underused by Virgin, and frankly unloved, with the caged-in aesthetic that feels more like an animal companion relief area than an extension of the glam Clubhouse two levels below.
Airline execs have been mooting plans for the upstairs areas for some time, but lounge staffers were none the wiser when I visited — or were keeping mum.
On reflection, though, what’s most impressive is how these new updated lounge zones both breathe new life into the space and feel like they really belong to the original 2006 lounge.
The counterpoint to this is the KLM non-Schengen Crown Lounge in Amsterdam, which feels like a half-dozen smaller lounges of incoherent designs squeezed into a trenchcoat .
The Clubhouse, of course, has the advantage of the great bones and original design philosophy of this lounge, but the bones are by no means unique to Virgin in this elderly terminal. Let’s not forget that Terminal 3 is now Heathrow’s oldest, and indeed parts of the former Oceanic Terminal were originally constructed five years before Heathrow was even called Heathrow, let alone given terminal numbers.
Most of the T3 lounges are in the same “lounge box” extension or the one that mirrors it on the other side of the passenger corridor leading to gates 13-22.
American Airlines’ much less impressive lounge complex sits just one level below, while BA’s (dreadful) and Qantas’ (great if the downstairs bar is open, only okay if it’s not) are on the opposite side of the passageway, with the excellent Cathay options one lounge box further along.
The Clubhouse is a great lounge, for sure. But in its context it’s certainly helped by mediocre offerings from much of the Heathrow competition, particularly hometown rival British Airways. Just look at the offerings for someone who needs to open up a laptop or pro tablet to get some work done in the lounge.
In the Clubhouse: two dedicated work pods, plus a variety of tables and booths at varying heights with comfortable chairs, all with power sockets.
In BA’s business class lounge across the hall, last refurbished in 2023: six uncomfortable high-top half-back perch stools right next to each other, and right next next to the rubbish bins, with a bright, glaring, LED billboard screen flashing ads. It poses the question of which you’d rather have first: backache or a migraine.
In BA’s busy lounge where I struggled to find a seat, it was no wonder all six of these stools in front of the physical embodiment of a pop-up ad were empty.
Virgin, of course, doesn’t just compete with BA out of Heathrow, nor is its SkyTeam partner business class passenger and frequent flyer cardholder situation ideal in the age where alliances and transatlantic joint ventures are a key part of the picture.
But the Clubhouse is still the best lounge at Heathrow — and remains one of the very best business class lounges in the world.
