St Kitts airport, a tiny terminal with no jet bridges, uses its private jet lounge as a paid lounge and to provide private services to guests at the Four Seasons Resort, Nevis. Passengers staying at this property, which requires a boat ride to reach it from St. Kitts are met on the ground and driven to the YU Lounge for private immigration processing. On departure they are dropped off here where they can relax before their flight.

The lounge also offers a US$220 entry fee!

Located about 5 minutes drive from the main terminal the lounge pavilion is large. Opening at 5am, the staff were very friendly on my arrival. They confirmed my flight information, that I was checking no bags and that the American Airlines agent would come and see me in due course. I had the lounge to myself for some time before the first batch of other guests arrived. The lounge offered a Nespresso self service coffee machine and everything else was brought by the agent on duty.

A light breakfast is offered – with warm scrambled eggs, fruit and bread. It was enough, but not a large portion. There were no serve yourself snacks.

The lounge had a number of areas with different sorts of seating, comfortable and welcoming. The WiFi was speedy and I managed to do some work whilst waiting. There were two desktop Mac PC’s for passengers to use.

The AA agent appeared and as I was going through to Paris, via Miami and New York, I was expecting a problem. It was only minor, they couldn’t generate the boarding pass from Heathrow to London. She confirmed no bags were to be checked, and invited me to relax.

The lounge has a high roof and consists of almost all dark woods. There is an outside area with loungers but it was too early in the morning to enjoy this area.

Champagne was produced and offered to all of the guests. There was a TV playing US news channels.

About 40 minutes before the departure of my flight I was asked to go through Security – American had already taken my passport through immigration. It was in a private area of the terminal and the friendly staff allowed shoes-on through but laptops/liquids/ipads had to come out. A porter then took me to the car that was waiting outside. Driven to the plane, I was dropped off near the bottom of the stairs and showed the American agent my boarding pass. Boarding had already started and I was a bit concerned about overhead space, but there wasn’t a problem eventhough the 737-800, had the old American bins. Then I was on the plane.

It was a really great experience – and if staying at the Four Seasons, one last feeling of luxury before the humdrum of the American Airlines 07:30hrs departure to Miami.