United Airlines has introduced their new grab and go lounge that encourages taking items out of the lounge for your flight and it works much better than expected, both in terms of selection and convenience.

Within the past two weeks, United Airlines announced the arrival of their latest lounge offering in Denver. It happened to be good timing for us given we were scheduled to fly out of the airport this past weekend.

Location

Currently only one United Club Fly location is open, and it’s located in Denver past Gate B60, all the way at the end of one side of the terminal. I suppose the only complaint I can think of is it’s certainly a long walk to come here if you happen to be flying out of a gate located on the other side of the terminal. Our Gate was located at B38 and it still took us a good 5-10 minute walk in one direction.

Access

There are similar requirements to get into the United Club Fly lounge as their standard lounge, but with one key difference at least for us: eligible members are not allowed to bring in a guest. And it honestly makes sense for them to do this. There is no lounge attendant available to confirm access—you scan your boarding pass and the gates open for one person.

Although the signage does not explicitly mention Star Alliance Gold members have access, there is the reference to Star Alliance Gold at the bottom of the sign. Just remember that United Airlines does not give access to those who earned Star Alliance Gold from their own MileagePlus program; it needs to have been earned from a foreign program. Both Jennifer and I have Star Alliance Gold status from transferring points over to Singapore Airlines during the pandemic, as Singapore Airlines had a unique promotion to encourage some extra income when people weren’t flying. Since we had the kids with us and given no guests were allowed, we took turns going inside while the other parent entertained the kids outside. On that note, I did see another parent bringing his wife and two young kids in with him, with the alarm blaring that extra people snuck in and no one working there seemed to react to it.

Seating

There are a few places to rest your bags and have a seat but given the intent of the lounge is to take things from it, there isn’t much seating available and indeed it never seemed to be crowded when I was there, despite the crowds at the nearby pop-up United Club lounge by Gate B59.

Food

The lounge offerings here seemed better than what was on offer at the nearby regular United Club lounge. There was a good variety of pre-packaged foods and drinks you could explicitly take with you out of the lounge. We stopped by around 10:30am and they had a decent selection of items for both breakfast and lunch. In particular, the full-sized bottles of Naked Juice were surprising to see and welcoming. Food options included sandwiches, salads, cheese, fruits, cereals, and cookies. You’ll be disappointed if you wanted anything warm but these are solid options for cold foods.

Drinks

This lounge also had a small counter where you could order drinks from a barista. And they have a normal counter where you can get the regular lounge offering in case that’s more of your style. They also had a number of special promotion water bottles that we confirmed with the staff that guests can take.

Note that the only thing then that’s missing is the standard alcoholic beverages you can get from a regular United Club lounge. But let’s be honest—the alcoholic offering at a regular United Club is underwhelming (Bud and Coors Light are your beer choices). I would much rather take barista-made beverages over the alcohol collection in a standard lounge. And if you truly need the alcohol, there’s nothing stopping you from enjoying both this to-go lounge and a regular lounge on the same trip to the airport.

Recommendation: Solid Yes

Well done, United Airlines for being innovative on lounge offerings and removing the awkwardness of wondering whether it’s ok to remove food from the lounge to enjoy on the flight. Obviously the real question of whether or not they will build more is dependent upon how much guests abuse the system. But hopefully as the concept here matures, it will find its way into other locations. I don’t view this as a replacement of a traditional lounge but something to help supplement current options—and hopefully United views it that way too.