Amex Platinum Card News: New Lounges, Metal Cards

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The Platinum Card from American Express is one of my top travel credit cards (#2) for a lot of reasons. It has a great sign-up bonus of 60,000 Membership Rewards, grants hotel status with Hilton and SPG/Marriott, up to $400 worth of credit, and has the best lounge access offered by any premium card (at least I think it does). And now the lounge perks will be getting a little bit sweeter.

New, larger lounge at DFW

Via VFTW, the American Express Centurion Lounge at DFW will be relocating and expanding sometime in the first half of 2018. The new lounge will have 3000 square feet more space and will also be adding new features like an extra shower, private telephone rooms, and a private “mother’s room.”

The Centurion Lounge at DFW is one of the largest Centurion lounges (if not the largest) but like many other Centurion Lounges it’s been plagued by overcrowding. This new lounge will replace the old lounge (moving from near D14 to near gate D17) so there will still only be one Centurion Lounge at DFW but at least it will be bigger. (I personally think overcrowding is still going to be a persistent issue for all of these lounges until more start to pop up.)

More lounge access abroad

The Platinum Card is also offering enhanced lounge access abroad. When you fly, Lufthansa, Swiss, or Austrian you’ll be able to access Lufthansa lounges in Munich.

As reported by OMAAT:

• Platinum cardmembers get access to the Lufthansa Business Lounges in the Terminal 2 Satellite when flying Lufthansa, Swiss, or Austrian in any class of service
• Platinum cardmembers get access to the Lufthansa Senator Lounges in the Terminal 2 Satellite when flying Lufthansa, Swiss, or Austrian in business class
• Centurion cardmembers get access to the Lufthansa First Class Lounge in the Terminal 2 Satellite when flying Lufthansa, Swiss, or Austrian in any class of service

What stands out is that lounge access will be granted regardless of which class of service you book your flight in. Unfortunately, guests will not be included but this is still a valuable new perk. I think that the Platinum Card will increasingly offer more options for lounge access and continue to be one of the best credit cards for all-around premium benefits. It’s also interesting to see a distinguishing benefit for the Centurion Card, as there’s currently a lot of overlap with the Platinum Card in terms of benefits offered.

New metal cards

While the metal cards for the personal Platinum Card have been out for a while, you can now request metal cards for the Enhanced Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN. You can do this by calling in or by logging in online and requesting the metal card. I think the thrill (assuming there ever was one) of metal cards has died out over the past year but I still like the feel and look of metal cards, especially the way the metal Platinum Cards look.