If your Priority Pass came bundled with a card that isn’t a Chase Sapphire Reserve, and you’ve been saving your one free Chase Sapphire Lounge visit for a trip that matters, that plan expires Saturday. On August 15, Chase pulls its nine US Sapphire Lounge locations out of the Priority Pass and LoungeKey networks.
You’re not losing much. But you’re losing it in four days, and if you have a flight before then through one of those airports, the visit is sitting there unused.
Here’s what actually goes away. Priority Pass and LoungeKey members currently get one complimentary Chase Sapphire Lounge visit per calendar year, subject to availability, plus the option to pay $75 a head for additional visits. After the 15th, both of those are gone. Not reduced. Gone.
The rest of your Priority Pass is untouched. More than 1,900 lounges and travel experiences stay in the network, and Chase counts up to 49 other options at the same airports it’s exiting. Nobody’s membership just got worthless.
Chase built nine nice lounges, watched them fill up with people carrying other banks’ cards, and decided its own customers should get the chairs. It’s hard to be outraged about that. The mildly funny part is the setup: for three years the free annual visit worked as a tasting menu, and the natural next step after the tasting menu is the $795 application.
Sapphire Reserve holders get the other side of the trade. If you carry the Chase Sapphire Reserve, Sapphire Reserve for Business, J.P. Morgan Reserve, or the Ritz-Carlton Card, your unlimited access is unchanged and your access window gets longer. From August 15, you can walk into a Sapphire Lounge up to five hours before a connecting flight on a same-day layover, up from three. That matches what Amex allows at Centurion Lounges. Originating flights still cap at three hours.
Five hours instead of three is a real perk on a bad connection. It’s the difference between a gate chair and a shower.
Check this today. If you hold Priority Pass through a non-Chase card and you’re flying through an airport with a Chase Sapphire Lounge before Saturday, open the Priority Pass app, confirm whether you’ve used your annual visit, and use it. If you’re not flying before the 15th, do nothing. There’s no action to take and nothing to cancel.
For everyone else, file this away as a data point rather than an emergency. Priority Pass access has been quietly shrinking across the premium card market all year, and lounge access is the benefit issuers cut first because it’s the one that costs them per person walking through the door. If lounge entry is the reason you pay a premium annual fee, re-read your card’s benefits guide at renewal rather than assuming last year’s list still holds.
More on whether a premium fee still pencils out at our credit cards hub and our best credit card picks.
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