After our flight from Milan, we decided to pop into town for a quick dinner and walk before our flight from Zurich back home to Singapore. When we got back to the airport, we headed straight for the Senator Lounge in the non-Schengen “E” pier, where our flight was departing from.
The SWISS Senator “E” Lounge had been on my radar for quite awhile, and I was pleased to finally get a chance to check it out, especially the famous Whisky Club 28/10. While I thought the lounge was a really nice place to hang out before flight, once again the food offerings felt a little weak. The Whisky Club was interesting and had a huge selection, but there’s only so much whisky one can, or more accurately, should drink before a flight.
Let’s dive into this review of the SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’!
Location and access
As its name suggests, the lounge is located in the non-Schengen ‘E’ pier. The ‘E’ pier is where long haul flights depart. To get to the ‘E’ pier, one has to clear passport control and take the Skymetro people mover from the main terminal building to the ‘E’ pier. Once at ‘E’ pier, the lounge is located on level 3, with the stairs and lifts up to the lounge located near the middle of the pier.
SWISS has a First Class, Senator and Business lounge in the ‘E’ pier. The Senator lounge, as with other LH Group Senator lounges such as the one in London Heathrow, can be accessed by LH Miles & More Senator, and Star Alliance Gold passengers travelling in any class. The lounge also accepts First Class passengers from other Star Alliance carriers such as Singapore Airlines. We were flying Business Class on SWISS which doesn’t normally come with Senator access, but we could access it with my Star Alliance Gold status via KrisFlyer Elite Gold.
The SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’ is open from 6am to 10pm daily. This covers virtually all SWISS and Star Alliance non-Schengen departures, but that closing time can be inconvenient which I’ll explain later.
The lounge
Upon reaching the lounge, the dark wood flooring and stone feature wall were a welcome contrast to the, in my opinion, sterile and industrial terminal. There was also a Breitling wall, with various clocks set to different time zones and a few display cases of Breitling watches.
We were welcomed to the lounge by the agents at the counter, and directed to the right side to the Senator Lounge. The Business lounge was located to the left of reception (when facing the reception desk). Having spent most of the day out and about in Milan and Zurich, we wanted a shower first. We were pointed to the shower rooms which were somewhat awkwardly located behind us, opposite the reception desk. This meant the showers were technically outside the lounge. I’ll talk about the showers in more detail later in this review.
The SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’ takes up 1100sqm and has seating capacity for 170 passengers. It’s broken into several zones, as seen on this map:
Seating
When entering the Senator Lounge for real, the Whisky Club 28/10 is on the left, with the boulevard leading to the lounging and dining areas to the right. The boulevard had some seating which didn’t really look comfortable, both in terms of design and positioning. The boulevard was quite nice, with a fixture of several mountains with their heights indicated. There was some reading material here as well.
At the end of the boulevard, there were 3 booths for making phone calls. Given that these booths didn’t have doors, I don’t quite get how it’s supposed to keep noise levels down….
The lounging areas mainly consisted of low-backed armchairs with side tables. We stationed ourselves in a pair of armchairs facing each other along the window. This section was good for couples, with just pairs of armchairs facing each other. The chairs were probably far enough apart that two strangers should still be ok, but I’d think it suits couples more. This configuration does ensure each passenger has their own set of power outlets and USB-A ports, which are mounted into the side table. There was a mix of power outlets, which should suit almost every traveller. This arrangement was similar to what I saw in the SWISS Alpine lounge a few days earlier.
The majority of the seating was similar, with armchairs mainly in clusters of 2×2. Each pair of armchairs beside each other shared one side table, and therefore one set of power outlets. The stone feature wall and dark wood flooring continued in the seating area.
There was a small Breitling section which had a different type of seating, more living room style.
In the deepest part of the lounge was the resting area. This consisted of loungers rather than any sort of flat sleeping surface. At least the loungers were in semi-private pods. The area was quite brightly lit though, so travellers may find rest hard to come by.
There was a dining area with proper dining tables and chairs. There was a large communal table, individual tables for pairs of passengers, as well as bar-type seating by the window.
The Whisky Club 28/10 also had a seating area which featured a cluster of 4 chairs around a coffee table of sorts. Or should I say whisky table?
Overall, it was nice that the lounge had separation for the different zones. There were really only 3 types of seating, across the dining, lounging and resting areas.
Food & beverage
For what is a rather large lounge, the F&B area wasn’t very expansive. I’ve been in enough LH Group lounges not to expect a huge buffet. In fact, there was only a cold buffet. Instead, most of the hot dishes were cooked to order at a live cooking station.
The cold buffet mainly consisted of salad and desserts. These all looked rather similar to what I’d seen at the SWISS Alpine Lounge a few days prior.
SWISS helpfully displays a menu at each section of food. For the hot food, there were 3 items available cooked-to-order, plus a couple of soups and pizzas.
Having had a large dinner in town during our transit, I only ordered a sausage to sample. This was freshly pan fried and the taste was not too bad. I was tempted to get a portion of Alpine macaroni since the one in the Alpine Lounge had been quite satisfying, but alas I was just too full for it.
The lounge had the usual assortment of soft drinks, beers, spirits, wines and coffee machines. None of the wines seemed particularly high quality. As with the food, most of the selection was quite familiar.
While the live cooking station gave a premium feel to the offerings, the overall variety seemed limited. The food selection in fact seemed smaller than even the Lufthansa lounge in Milan we visited earlier in the day, and that’s not even a Senator-level lounge. However, this level is more or less the standard for LH Group lounges. That said, the quality of food on offer was good. The lack of variety wasn’t really an issue on this visit, since food wasn’t the main thing on our minds. Therefore, I rate the quality and quantity of F&B satisfactory overall.
Whisky Club 28/10
One of the standout features of the SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’ is the Whisky Club 28/10. The “28/10” in the name takes after one of the runways in Zurich Airport, which runs parallel to pier ‘E’. SWISS boasts that the Whisky Club is home to over 200 varieties of whiskies.
The lovely staff manning the Whisky Club was more than happy to make recommendations based on each passenger’s preference. She also mentioned a few to steer clear of, such as Swedish (I think) whisky which neither looked nor smelled like whisky.
I’m not a massive whisky drinker, nor did I want too much alcohol in my system before boarding an 11h flight, so I didn’t spend too long at the Whisky Club. I did get to sample a handful of whiskies, which was a nice experience overall.
Terrace
I think I speak for all avgeeks when I say that the open air terrace is one of the nicest features of the lounge. It may have been a chilly autumn night, but I spent a bit of time out on the terrace. Sadly at that hour there wasn’t too much aircraft movements.
Along the terrace, SWISS provides Leica binoculars in a metal container. The inside of the box also had a map of Zurich airport with the runways indicated.
Amenities
As I mentioned earlier in the review, we opted to take a shower immediately after arriving at the lounge. The showers are located opposite the reception desk, and shared with the Business lounge. We had to exchange our boarding passes for a lounge key, as is typical at many airline lounges.
The shower room was quite basic to be honest. Body and hand towels were placed in the shower room in plastic packaging. There was hand and body wash, body lotion, shampoo and soap. All the toiletries were marketed as a partnership between Swiss brand Seoder and SWISS. The shower had both a shower head and rain shower.
The toilets were located within the lounge itself, unlike the showers. Nothing fancy here either, but they were clean. It was odd seeing an odd for Range Rover on a digital display in the toilet though.
Leaving the lounge
I normally focus on the features and offerings of the lounge in these reviews. However, in this review I want to specifically highlight one annoying aspect of the lounge, which is the closing time. LX176 to Singapore is one of the last departures of the day at 10.40pm, with SWISS flights to Hong Kong, Sao Paulo and Johannesburg also departing around the same time. Around 9.50pm, announcements were made that the lounge was closing shortly. This meant that passengers started exiting the lounge en masse, causing a congestion at the lifts.
The exit from the lounge was also premature, as boarding for most of the departures didn’t start till around 10.15pm. For context, the boarding time on our boarding pass was 9.55pm. If boarding had indeed started on time, closing the lounge at 10pm would be fine. However, this didn’t occur in reality. I felt SWISS could have left the lounge open another 15min or so, to also cater to premium passengers who prefer to board later.
Conclusion
I thought the SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’ was a nice place to relax before our flight. As with most LH Group lounges, the food offering was rather lacking quantity-wise, but made up for it in quality. The Whisky Club was a nice place to hang out, complemented by the lovely staff manning the counter. The terrace is of course an avgeek’s dream, and I only wish I could visit in the daytime for better viewing. We spent close to 2h in the lounge, and I think that was about the right amount of time to spend in this lounge. I certainly would have preferred a few extra minutes in the lounge rather waiting around the gate area for boarding to commence.
Ultimately, a lounge is about a relaxing and peaceful location to unwind before a flight, and the SWISS Senator Lounge ‘E’ managed that. I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to visit the lounge again, but I’d certainly make time for the lounge if my itinerary has me on a long-haul out of Zurich.