Lounge Review: Malaysia Airlines Golden Lounge Regional Kuala Lumpur

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While transiting Kuala Lumpur airport between two ‘regional’ flights, I had a chance to use Malaysia Airlines Golden Lounge regional.

Malaysian has two lounges at KLIA, a regional lounge at the main terminal building which mainly services the airline’s Boeing 737 fleet and a bigger Golden lounge at the satellite pier which services the airline’s and airports long haul wide body traffic.

Getting there

The regional lounge is located right in the center of the mail terminal building beside the trains to the satellite pier. A board shows the lounge entry and an escalator takes you up to the entrance desk.

Entry qualifications

The lounge is open to all First and Business class passengers traveling on Malaysian and to Oneworld Emerald and Sapphire traveling on any Oneworld airline.

Lounge Layout

The lounge is not very large with a sofa seating area to one side and a more upright seating area with the tables on another side. The central area has a large buffet spread with a few more seats and an enclosed area with a TV.

The areas with the sofas looks plush and comfy. The other seating area which is more comfortable to eat some food is reasonably cramped. It also has some bar style tables and chairs along the windows which offer an amazing view of the airport. I would take this seat just to look out of the windows.

Food

The lounge has a large selection of food which includes an asian and continental selection. It also has a live counter where you can order freshly made Laksa or wanton noodles.

The food was by and large good, with the laksa from the live counter being excellent. However the lounge staff seem to have the same cold and brusque attitude which was being displayed by the crew on my Malaysian flights (trip report coming soon). The bad attitude kind of ruins the great product provided by the live counter.

The lounge also has a full bar with an decent selection of drinks.

Overall

If seen as a pure regional lounge, this lounge is great. It’s pretty good even as a proper international lounge. For some reason the lounge does have a somewhat worn out look and feel to it, but that is just me being picky.

The food at the lounge is good and one can expect a full meal here, which is way above par for a regional lounge.

The biggest let down at the lounge is the attitude of the staff, without fail they were cold and brusque. At no time were the staff proactively helpful. An example is just as I was leaving, I asked the entry desk what time my flight would begin boarding and they checked on the computer and repeated the time printed on the boarding pass. When I got down to the gate five minutes later, I saw that the flight was delayed by 40 minutes. It would have been nice for them to mention that.

By comparison, on the return trip from Singapore on Malaysian, the SIA lounge agent came up to me and told me the gate number, how far it was and that Malaysian only begins boarding 20 minutes before the flight at the earliest, so I could depart the lounge 30 minutes before the flight and not the 55 minutes as indicated on the boarding card.