Single Travelers Are Finding Love in Airport Lounges

Brittany Romano, 32, was not looking to start her own long-distance rom-com last September when she showed up to the lounge at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B 10 minutes before her flight was set to board — but she did.

That’s where she met Matt Harrington, 35, a schoolteacher from Pasadena, Calif. He had spied her rushing through security, and when she stopped in the lounge for her usual routine — “take a shot and use the restroom” — he sent her a tequila shot and took one himself. Then the two jogged to catch their plane, as it turned out they were on the same flight to Los Angeles.

Ms. Romano, an entertainment journalist who lives in New York, assumed that would be that, but Mr. Harrington begged a flight attendant to switch his seat so he could sit with her. More tequila shots followed over the course of the six-hour flight; the pair still talk daily.

There has always been something magical about an airport love story. “Airports are lawless,” said Natalie Stoclet, 32, a writer and designer based in Mexico City, who once had a flirtation with a man she met in the Iberia lounge at the Madrid airport. “You can have a cocktail at 8 a.m., wear compression socks with no shame and delusionally stare at the departures board, convincing yourself that you could change your flight and start a new life in Paris. Anything goes.” (Her lounge fling fizzled out, but at least she still has “a good airport story,” she said.)

But airport lounges, those calmer, semi-exclusive spaces away from the deadening realities of modern air travel, have increasingly become a locus of romance for millennials, who post TikTok videos of themselves getting dressed up to go to the lounge early before a flight, hoping to find their soul mate or, at the very least, a fresh romance. It’s the new, “I’m looking for a man in finance,” if you will.

“Romanticizing airports thinking I will casually find my future travel loving husband at one,” one TikTok user wrote. “Waiting mysteriously in the Emirates lounge waiting for my future husband to sweep me off my feet as I live in my own movie,” another user captioned her clip. “Can we have a designated ‘singles lounges’ at airports please,” asked a third.

Grace Ma, 38, an investor in New York, and a Delta and American Express Centurion lounge fanatic, said that lounges are the new members-only clubs — though more intimate and less intimidating — which makes them a prime location for dating. “It’s…