Now Live: United Airlines Makes Gifting Lounge Passes Nearly Impossible

Buried in the numerous updates from United Airlines at the end of March, you may have missed a negative change for one-time passes to visit a United Club lounge at the airport.

Going forward, gifting these passes to other travelers will be nearly impossible.

Here’s what you should know about the changes to lounge passes on May 1, 2025.

Changes to United Club One-Time Passes on May 1

Cards like United℠ Explorer Card and United℠ Business Card offer cardholders a pair of one-time passes each year, valid for visiting a United Club. You can’t bring any guests when using these passes, but since you have 2 of them, you can access the lounge twice by yourself or use 1 pass for yourself and use the other pass to bring a guest.

Previously, you could gift these passes to anyone you wanted. This was great for anyone with expiring passes who wanted to elevate a friend’s travel experience. “Hey, visit the lounge before your flight. Here you go!” It was a nice setup.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.

United’s website details changes to these passes, effective May 1, 2025. The new rules are as follows (we’ve reprinted the airline’s language exactly as it was written):

• One-time passholders may use their pass only within three hours of their scheduled flight departure. This doesn’t apply if the pass is being used during a connection.
• One-time passholders can’t visit United Club Fly locations.
• One-time passes issued from United MileagePlus credit cards must be redeemed by the primary cardholder, an authorized user or guests accompanied by either.

To sum up the biggest change: Travelers with one-time lounge passes can only gift them if they (or an authorized user on the card) are present at the time of redemption.

Additionally, these one-time passes will only be valid at United Club locations and not grab-and-go United Club Fly locations.

Why Is United Making Lounge Passes Harder To Use?

United has big plans for its lounges in the coming years, and we knew changes would come. However, that doesn’t mean the loss of flexibility will make travelers happy. If you had a United Club one-time pass you couldn’t use, you could gift it to a friend — even if you weren’t traveling together. As of May 1, 2025, that has ended.

United is opening, renovating, and expanding multiple United Club locations as part of its vision for its lounges. Reducing the number of guests in the lounges — or charging a premium for travelers who want to bring them — seems to be part of that vision.

Final Thoughts

United continues to make changes to its lounge access and guest policies at United Clubs. Starting today, you can’t gift your one-time visit passes to anyone you please. That’s likely to make travelers unhappy, as more passes will expire without being used.

Unfortunately, we think that’s likely what the airline is trying to accomplish with this change.