Entry
You can enter the Cathay Pacific Kuala Lumpur lounge if you’re flying on any oneworld airline and hold either Emerald or Sapphire status or are travelling in Business or First.
The Space
The lounge is somewhat dated compared to Cathay’s lounges in Bangkok, Manila or Singapore. While perfectly fine, don’t expect Cathay’s flagship noodle bar, or modern design. This said, it was a perfectly acceptable place to spend an hour or two.
We visited twice. Once a couple of hours before a Cathay Dragon flight was scheduled, and the second time after a Cathay flight had just departed. The lounge is compact, and even when busy it wasn’t hard finding a seat, although it didn’t feel particularly relaxed. In contrast, when a Cathay departure wasn’t imminent, the lounge appeared to be all but deserted. This made it perfect if you wanted to work, or grab a bit of silence. On the plus, even during busy periods the wifi held up and was perfectly fine for browsing.
There are various seating areas, with good views of the airport, as well as a dining area and a small business centre. However, there are no showers so if you’re looking to freshen up you’d be better heading to the Malaysia Airlines lounge instead.
Food and Drink
The food selection was good, and while there wasn’t a great deal of choice, what was there was of a high quality. In fact, I found it better than the food served in the Malaysia Airlines flagship lounge. While the selection was different during our two separate visits, choices included a selection of warm canapes, a very decent pasta dish, noodles, vegetables and chicken.
It’s commonplace for most Cathay lounges to have a crewed bar area, this isn’t the case in Kuala Lumpur. Instead, there was a selection of self pour spirits as well as one red and one white wine (both Argentinean). The quality of these were fine, but don’t expect anything too outstanding.
Conclusions
Overall the Cathay Lounge is a good, but not particularly excellent option if you’re heading through Kuala Lumpur. It’s not somewhere I’d head to the airport early for but at the same time there are far worse places to spend an hour or two. I found the food and drinks to be better than those offered by Malaysia Airlines in their flagship lounge, but Cathay could definitely do with updating their offering in Kuala Lumpur and bringing it up to the same standard as their other lounges worldwide.
