Oneworld to open all-new Seoul lounge

The Oneworld airline alliance will open its first Oneworld-branded lounge at South Korea’s Incheon International Airport. Oneworld is aiming for an official ribbon-cutting in January 2024, although the lounge could open slightly earlier for lounge-worthy travellers, should everything come together in time. A Oneworld spokesperson said the group “will provide more information in due course.” The Oneworld Seoul lounge is located at Terminal 1, which hosts flights by seven of the group’s 13 member airlines. Seoul was on the shortlist for the ‘first wave’ of Oneworld-branded and backed lounges which the alliance initially announced in 2019. “The idea is that we develop these where no single airline has a massive presence, but we have multiple airlines flying into the same airport, maybe with daily flights,” then-CEO Rob Gurney told Executive Traveller at the time. “So while collectivity we (as Oneworld) have a lot of flights, no single airline could justify the cost of the lounge.” The Oneworld lounge at Seoul Incheon is being built on the 4th floor of T1, near Gate 28, in space previously allocated to Jeju Air, which pulled down the shutters on its own clubhouse-style ‘JJ Lounge’ after the pandemic hit in 2020.<br/>