June 23, 2023

Alaska Air opens renovated Sea-Tac lounge

Photo courtesy of Alaska Airlines [enlarge]

The revamped lounge has 50% more seating.

Following a five-month renovation, Alaska Airlines on Wednesday reopened its D Concourse Lounge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to premium passengers and frequent flyers. What the airline calls its oldest and “historically most popular lounge” has undergone a significant transformation. SRG Partnership designed the improvements, which PCL built.

According to a press release, Alaska has added 50% more seating and improved amenities.

The 40-year-old lounge was last renovated nearly 20 years ago. The revamped space features a diversity of seating options. These include a series of comfortable loungers on a mezzanine level offering runway views. A new barista station has been added at the lower level and there is now a proper bar and expanded hot food options, which are served throughout the day.

The lounge layout has been reconfigured to improve flow, ease of movement, and access to these offerings.

A visual highlight of the renovated space is artwork by Coast Salish artist Louie Gong of the Nooksack Indian Tribe. This work includes a striking piece of wall art depicting a scuffle between three hummingbirds, which the artist says symbolizes “the human tendency to simplify interpersonal challenges by assigning blunt archetypes like the hero, victim and bully.” Gong hopes the image reminds people that the pathway to peace usually resists this natural tendency.

The renovation of the D Concourse Lounge is part of the airline's $7 million investment to upgrade its airport lounges in 2022-23. Those upgrades also include an expanded C Concourse Lounge, which opened last November.

Alaska is also planning to build a completely new lounge as part of the Port of Seattle's C Concourse expansion. That more than 20,000-square-foot lounge, which Alaska hopes to open in 2025-26, would eventually become the primary lounge for travelers departing from C and D concourses.

The port's $340 million C Concourse expansion will add four floors above the existing building, and will span to D Concourse with 145,530 additional square feet of restaurant and retail space, an interfaith prayer and meditation room and nursing suite, and the new lounge. Miller Hull and Woods Bagot are leading the design of that project, which has lots of exposed wood and is inspired by the natural landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and local forests. It should break ground this year.