To accommodate Delta travelers at one of the busiest concourses in the country, you need a lounge on the scale of the flagship Delta Sky Club in Atlanta (ATL).
Just about everything inside the Concourse B Delta Sky Club at ATL screams “big”, and that size is what makes it the best Delta Sky Club in Atlanta.
Clocking in at 25,000 square feet, the sprawling, airy Sky Club utilizes every inch in order to serve the busy Delta hub airport. Delta says it is the second-largest club after the JFK Terminal 4 lounge. The lounge was built in 2015 over the B concourse, and it has room for 500 travelers at a time.
While enormous, the club holds on to the stylish flair seen in the newer Delta Sky Clubs around the country (like the new club in Fort Lauderdale (FLL)), boasting modern, Atlanta-themed art installations, a moodily lit bar area, and floor-to-ceiling windows on both the east and west sides of the club.
Getting into the Delta Sky Club Atlanta
Like all Delta Sky Clubs, there are a few ways to get into the lounge.
The easiest way is with the Platinum Card® from American Express – not the co-branded Delta American Express Card.
This card opens more lounge doors than any premium credit card on the market. So long as you’re flying Delta that day, you can just show your Platinum card and your boarding pass, and get in. You can bring additional guests, but it will cost you: After a hike in February 2023, each guest costs $50.
Click Here to learn more about the Platinum Card® from American Express.
You can also get into the Sky Club if you’ve got Delta’s top co-branded credit card, the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card. Much like the Platinum card, you can enter any Sky Club for free so long as you’re flying Delta that day. Reserve cardholders also get two, one-time guest passes – after that, you’ll have to pay $50 per guest.
Click Here to learn more about the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card.
And even cardholders with one of Delta’s lesser co-branded cards can get in – for a fee. If you’ve got the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card, you can enter any Delta Sky Club when you’re flying Delta that day by paying $50.
Unfortunately, flyers with the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card can no longer buy their way into the Sky Club. No matter which card you have, you need to be flying Delta that day to get in.
Read More: How to Access the Delta Sky Club
What is the Best Delta Sky Club in Atlanta?
If you've got Sky Club access and you're flying through Atlanta (ATL), you have plenty of options. There are nine different Delta Sky Club locations at the Atlanta Airport, but its flagship lounge in Concourse B stands above the rest.
The other Sky Clubs can be found in each of ATL's seven concourses, including two different clubs in Concourses A and D.
The lounge in ATL's international Concourse F has an outdoor seating area, but beyond that, none of the other clubs boast amenities better than its B Concourse lounge.
Where is the Flagship Atlanta Delta Sky Club?
The flagship location is in concourse B. You can find the club in the middle of the B Concourse, just above gate B18 and the train that connects the B gates to all of the other ones.
The blue fluorescent walls and “Delta Sky Club” signage are obvious when you exit the escalators that take you up from the train.
Once you arrive, you enter the sliding glass doors from the center of the concourse and you have to go up two levels to the check-in area. You can take the stairs or an elevator to get there.
The stairs are lined with travel-themed art. At the top, you walk down a long (also art-clad) hallway toward the check-in desk. Delta says the hallway gallery features a rotating sampling of pieces made by local artists.
Once one of the four agents checking guests in tells you about your flight and boarding gate, you are spit out into the seating area of the lounge near the large, west-facing windows.
Delta Sky Club Atlanta Flagship Lounge
Besides the check-in area and the restrooms, the entire flagship lounge is all one, big, spacious room. The brightly lit seating areas surround a dimmer bar area.
There was no bar seating due to COVID-19, but guests lined up to place their orders with the bartenders.
Inside, a wide variety of seating options are available to guests. Many opted for seats with views next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Others opted for the high-backed seats, some wider chairs, and dozens and dozens of more regular, but still varied lounge seats with table tray-sized armrests.
The enormous views offered by the lounge on both the east and west sides really make the space feel even larger, too.
While the weather on the day we visited was cloudy and rainy, the lounge normally showcases big views of both the airport and, on clear days, downtown Atlanta.
The lounge boasts two-story ceilings and creating ample wall space for the works of local artists. Most of the pieces were Atlanta-themed, with Coca-Cola and the Wright Brothers featured prominently on two of the largest walls.
The restrooms at the lounge are modestly sized for the number of people the club can hold.
Food & Drink
Everything about the space is big and extra, but the food and drink options weren't very different from other Sky Clubs around the country. Still, the locally-inspired food offerings allowed for a comfortable and delicious meal.
Atlanta Chef Linton Hopkins curates the rotating food menu at the flagship Sky Club location. On the day of our visit, a Caribbean Chicken recipe was the headliner with a Cilantro Lime Rice.
All of the typical salad offerings, including tomato and cucumber and a pasta salad were available to visitors as well.
Plus, the buffet featured some to-go sandwiches, cookies, and brownies.
The bar menu was the same complimentary and premium offerings of most Delta Sky Clubs but featured a special Wine Wall curated by Master Sommelier Andrea Robinson.
Set off to the side of the bar, guests can get up close and personal to the wine wall to pick out their specialty glass if they so choose. However, these wines were not included complimentary for guests but were available for purchase.
Bottom Line
The spacious, airy, art-clad flagship Delta Sky Club in Atlanta (ATL) offers big seating areas and big views with all of the usual fixings of a Sky Club.
If you are in the Atlanta airport, and you have the time to spare, we recommend taking the train to concourse B to visit this club, even if your flight doesn't depart from there.
Thanks for the comments Gunnar but I have to disagree on most points. The lounge is too large, crowded and not exclusive like it used to be. There is often a line for drinks. The food is mostly strange combinations that many people don’t want. They should at least offer some more routine or tradional foods choices like mac and cheese they used to have, pizza, etc. as an option. Cold pasta and strange salads and pesto soup gets old after while. They could do much better.
I am very sorry but I agree with Bob (first reactor). The lounge is nothing special, in fact it lacks a lot of things international lounges consider standard. Like really comfortable chairs with footrests or ottomans for people who have a long lay over. (I had to wait there for 7 hrs). They let anyone in who paid for it. And worst the lady who coordinated this was yelling to people who want to check in: “check into in to the lounge this line”…. for 7 hrs straight. It made me feel she was selling fish on the local market.
The food selection was ridiculous. A few salads and some cold cuts without decent bread. Also you jsd to stand in line at the bar to get a soda. Really in the birthplace of Coca Cola they can’t splurge on a machine that offers any kind of coke, like raspberry coke zero or whatever combination you like, tssss
! A machine that won’t make you wait 10min. would be greatly appreciated. And some better food selections is a must.
I sugguest the writer takes a look at other lounges around the world of their Skyteam partners. Look at the lounge of Air France in Charles de Gaulle in Paris, or the two lounges KLM lounges at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Compaired to those this lounge is far far behind in every aspect. And then I am not even talking about the lounges that are really luxurious like Emirates, Cathay Pacific etc.
Very disappointing.
I was going to sign up (living in Atlanta). I think I’ll opt out of the membership at this time.
I live in ATL. I have not been on the B Concourse in many years, so I did not even realize that there was a Flagship Lounge there! It used to be a really small lounge. I usually go to the F concourse for International flights, but I will be sure to check it out. Thanks!
My husband and I both hold Amex platinum cards. We tried to check-in and were informed we couldn’t take our young children with us to the lounge without paying a $50 fee. We understood that and decided to take quick turns.
As my husband went back, my children and I stayed in the lobby entrance. When we went to sit on the chairs, immediately adjacent to the entrance, the agent rudley told us that if we simply sat on them, he’ll charge us. He was condescending and disrespectful. I was disappointed with my experience. One would expect that a lounge that is catering to weary travelers would have more empathy and train their staff to speak to people with some kindness.