United club: same day arrival and no departure - can I still use

Upvote:2

While @Doc is correct, the cheapest paid lounge at ORD I am aware of is not the Delta one but the AF/KLM via Lounge pass. This is ~30USD (thanks Brexit for the low USD/GBP exchange rate, otherwise it's 35 USD).

Since this is in Terminal 5, there is no airside transfer, you need to take the shuttle and re-clear security! You need to buy a refundable ticket departing from T5, call the airline to uncheck yourself and refund it after clearing security. What a PITA!

Also, there is the insane trick where you buy a refundable first class ticket less than 24 hours before departure, go into the lounge and then get the ticket refunded... Here's a blog post doing this, the poster held a ticket for 30 minutes... I would not hesitate to pull this trick with United to gain access to the United Global First lounge in this situation. Tit for tat.

Upvote:5

There's some good news and some bad news...

The Good news is that your inbound flight is considered a "same day" flight, so you would be able to enter the United Club based on that flight.

The Bad news is that the United Clubs in Chicago Terminal 1 are currently not accepting one-time passes due to one or more of the clubs being closed for construction. This is not expected to change until December 2016. There is a smaller lounge in Terminal 2 (which can be accessed from T1), but it has also been restricting one-time passes.

So presuming you're travelling before December, you will likely NOT be able to access any of the United Clubs using your one-time pass. You can try the one in Terminal 2 and you may be allowed in, but expect it to be very crowded - there is construction going on in multiple of the lounges which is the reason for the "no one-day passes" rule, but even with that the lounges are still far more crowded than normal.

There are a number of other lounges at Chicago O'Hare, but the only other one that would be accessible for you would be the Delta lounge in terminal 2, at a cost of $59.

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