United has doubled down on its commitment to The Mile High City. While travelers have had to duke it out for space in airport lounges nationwide, the airline is offering its loyal fliers some breathing room in the form of a new lounge at its Denver International Airport hub—and it’s the largest in the brand’s history.
Today, United unveiled a 35,000-square-foot, three-story lounge with seating enough for more than 600 travelers near the B44 gate, and features including a brewery-inspired bar area with tasting flights and shuffleboard tables, locally curated art, runway views, and eventually, a rooftop patio.
Here’s what you need to know about the newest edition to United’s lounge portfolio.
The new lounge has seating for more that 600 guests, with lots of cozy, quieter nooks.
Courtesy of United
The space
Alex Dorrow, United’s Head of Clubs and Lounges, said the new lounge, known officially as B-East club due to it’s location in Concourse B, is meant to serve “tremendous amounts of traffic.”
Currently, Concourse B has 66 gates—and United is the only carrier that uses them. In June 2023 alone, an average of nearly 85,000 people flew United through Denver each day (two-thirds of whom are connecting, according to Dorrow). It makes sense that the network needed a large lounge to meet the demand.
Guests enter the lounge from the Concourse level, where they’re asked to scan their boarding passes or membership cards. From there, they can go up an escalator to the second and third floors, where there are three separate buffets, two bars, and a variety of seating areas, which range from high-top tables and chairs to leather sofas to plush wingback chairs and ottomans that overlook the airstrip. At some point in the future, Dorrow said there will be an outdoor lounge area on the third floor, though there are no dates set for that to open yet.
Visitors to the United Club B-East lounge can sample a flight of beers from Colorado breweries.
Courtesy of United
The food and drinks
At first glance, the second floor could be mistaken for any of the myriad craft breweries in Denver—and that’s the point. The exposed pipes running along the ceiling give it an industrial vibe, while shuffleboard tables and beer flights make it feel more like you’re at a post-work happy hour than an airport.
“This space was designed to be different from the rest of the club, to have a more social atmosphere,” Dorrow said. “It’s more about people hanging out and less about trying to get work done.”
At any given time, a dozen beers are on offer, all from Colorado. Two of the drafts, Coors Banquet and Coors Light, will always be on tap, while the other ten will rotate seasonally (the current autumn line-up includes the Pumpkin Ale from Boulder-based Upslope Brewing Company and Denver Beer Co.’s perennially popular raspberry kolsch known as Princess Yum Yum). The names of the current beers are found on five Vestaboards (an old-school flight information display system) behind the bar.
The two pours from Coors are complimentary, whereas a pint of any others will set you back $5. For those who’d like to try a few Colorado craft beers, there’s the option to do a flight of three or four 4-oz. beers (which cost $7 and $9, respectively). For those who’d prefer a more potent potable, there is a selection of complimentary wines and spirits, as well as premium offerings, such as the bevy of Colorado whiskeys, including Tincup, Stranahan’s, and Breckenridge Distillery.
The third-floor bar area is quieter and feels more like a cabin, with wood beams across the ceiling, leather couches, and plaid seat coverings.
There are three buffet areas in the lounge, including two on the second floor and one on the third. On offer, you might find club sandwiches, maple-mustard pork tenderloin, cheese tortellini, vegetarian green chili, macaroni and cheese, and a farro, butternut squash, and kale salad (which was especially tasty). Additionally, there are self-service coffee and soda stations and snack spots (with treats like trail mix, gummy bears, and chocolate salted caramels from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory) scattered throughout.
The entrance to United Club B-East features a piece of artwork made out of repurposed skateboards that looks like pine cones.
Courtesy of United
The art and design
Local artists were tapped to produce original pieces for the lounge. Perhaps the most noticeable is a nearly two-story sculpture by Will Schlough hanging from the ceiling at the entrance. It’s three blue spruce pine cones, the state tree of Colorado, made out of dozens of repurposed skateboards.
Another trio of prints by Danielle SeeWalker highlights her Indigenous heritage. Each image features a single person with a single eye, a concept SeeWalker said came to her in a dream: a tribal elder SeeWalker admires a woman with hoop-shaped braids she’d seen in a historical photo and her take on “Deer Woman,” a spirit in Native American mythology.
And in the second-floor bar area is a massive mural made up of geometric designs from a Denver-area artist known as Charlo. More than 40 words are hidden throughout the playful, graffiti-style piece (including “explore” and “adventure”). It’s meant to reveal the joy and discovery of travel, the artist said.
How to get into the United Club B-East in Denver
There are a handful of ways to access the new lounge space, all of which require travelers to be flying with United (or another Star Alliance member airline) that day. Options include having a United Club Membership or a one-time pass, Star Alliance Gold Status, or flying in a premium cabin. The United Club Infinite and United Explorer credit cards also grant users access to the lounge.
The lounge is open every day from 5 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Each of the items in the United Club Fly lounge, which opened in 2022, is meant to be grab-and-go.
Courtesy of United
Other United lounges
The last year has been big for United lounges throughout the United States.
In Denver, United has launched two new lounges in the last full year. In mid-August, United unveiled a new lounge in Concourse A, near gate A25. It’s the first United lounge in that concourse, which is where all of United’s international flights depart from (and where its Star Alliance partners, like Lufthansa and Air Canada, operate out of). And last November, United also launched a new lounge concept in Denver, dubbed Club Fly. The pint-sized lounge doesn’t offer alcohol or bathrooms, but it does include a row of coolers packed with pre-packaged sandwiches, salads, cheese trays, and beverages, as well as a barista bar for made-to-order espresso drinks, all of which are meant to be grab-and-go. The lounge, which looks like a mini-ski chalet, is near gate B61, close to where small regional flights depart and land; the idea is that you can grab a snack or drink to take with you before a shorter flight that might not have food and beverage service. It’s also meant to be a lounge solution for travelers short on time.
And that’s just the beginning. United Club B-West, near gate B30, closed its doors on September 12 so that the lounge could undergo an 18-month renovation. When it’s done, it’ll mirror the new United Club B-East in layout, but according to Dorrow, the vibe will be uniquely its own. Once that’s open, there will be more than 100,000 square feet of United lounge space in Denver International Airport.
Nationally, United has also opened a lounge in Chicago O’Hare and a massive new lounge in Newark Liberty International Airport’s new Terminal A, with another lounge coming to Newark later this year.
