Gatwick North Terminal lounges: all six, compared

Five pay-per-use lounges and one airline lounge serve the North Terminal, and between them they cover every brief from a £36 salad-bar stop to hosted table service. Three belong to No1 Lounges, two to Plaza Premium Group, and the Emirates lounge rounds out the set for that airline's Dubai departures. The table shows each operator's own starting price; how those floors move by booking channel is covered under the access section below.

Operator-direct starting prices and hours. The Emirates lounge does not sell general entry and is covered below.

Context for the choice sits one level up: every Gatwick lounge compares this set against the South Terminal's, and if your flight leaves from the other side of the airport, the South Terminal lounge guide is the page you want. The split matters because lounges are airside: once through security at North, the South rooms might as well be in another airport.

Every lounge at North shares one address. From security, cross the shopping walk-through into the main departure lounge and bear left; the lounge pavilion entrance is signed from the main floor, past the escalator (reviews consistently place a WHSmith at its foot, with Boots nearby, though shops do move). The ground-floor corridor serves four doors: My Lounge first on the left, Clubrooms, the Emirates lounge, and No1 Lounge at the far end. A lift in the same pavilion rides up to the fourth floor, where Plaza Premium and Plaza Express sit side by side near the gates 45 to 55 end of the terminal.

The practical upshot: you lose nothing by deciding late. Walk the corridor, glance through the doors, and buy whichever room looks calmest, subject to space. What surrounds the pavilion, from the restaurants to the gates and their walking times, is mapped in the North Terminal guide.

No1 Lounge is the room most people picture when they book a lounge: a hot and cold buffet, a bar with someone behind it pouring wines, beers and spirits, runway views and enough seating variety to cover couples, laptops and groups. At £40 direct it sits mid-table on price, and its 04:00 to 21:00 day is the longest at the airport, opening with the first wave and outlasting every neighbour in the evening.

The mechanics are the No1 Lounges standard: entry covers three hours before your flight, extra hours sell in advance if you want to arrive earlier, infants under two go free, and booking direct with the operator adds delay cover, which holds your seat until the flight actually leaves rather than until the clock expires. On a day of rolling delays that one clause outvalues everything else in the brochure. The full No1 Lounge review covers both terminals' rooms in detail, including how the North one differs from its South twin.

My Lounge, £38 and open 04:00 to 20:00, is the casual option: help-yourself drinks including a mix-your-own cocktail station, buffet food, sofas rather than armchairs, and a games room with video games, foosball and board games that quietly solves the hardest lounge problem, which is a bored eight-year-old. Infants under two go free, and the same three-hour standard, extra-hours option and direct-booking delay cover apply as at No1.

The room has history in this terminal: it opened as The Gateway, easyJet's co-branded lounge, and took the My Lounge name in 2024, which explains a fit-out built for the airline whose passengers dominate this side of the airport. easyJet flies only from North, so for most of its passengers this is the terminal's natural first look; the My Lounge review weighs it against paying £2 more for No1's tended bar. If you have not confirmed your side of the airport yet, check which terminal your airline uses before booking anything.

Clubrooms is the quiet room: adults-only from age 12, hosted table service instead of a buffet, an extended menu of complimentary dishes and cocktails, and private seating areas designed for conversation at normal volume. Doors run 05:00 to 20:30, an hour behind the neighbours in the morning, which only matters for the very first departure bank.

The £44 price reads as the top of the No1 family until you count the bundle: every Clubrooms booking includes Fast Track security, which sells separately from £6. No1 at £40 plus its own Fast Track pass comes to £46, so the calmer room with a waiter works out £2 cheaper than the standard room bought piecemeal. For two travellers without children it is the best-value door in the pavilion; for anyone with a pushchair it is not a door at all.

Plaza Premium, from £46 direct and open 04:00 to 20:00, holds the best real estate at North: the top floor of the pavilion, floor-to-ceiling windows over the runway, a hot buffet, a serviced bar and a kids' zone. It is the priciest bookable room on this side and the one that most feels like a destination rather than a waiting room; infants under two go free here too, and it is also the North lounge American Express Platinum cardholders get through the Amex programme.

Plaza Express, one floor-mate along, inverts the offer: from £36 direct, an all-day salad bar and a short express menu rather than the full spread, a playroom for children, and a 04:00 to 16:00 day that says plainly what it is for, morning flights. On the day this page was researched Plaza Premium's Gatwick pages listed both rooms above the airport's own channel, which had Plaza Express from £28, the cheapest lounge entry at Gatwick full stop. For a 10:00 departure with hand luggage and no appetite for a buffet marathon, that £28 is hard to argue with.

The Emirates lounge sits off the same ground-floor corridor as the No1 family, and it is the one door in the pavilion money alone does not open. Entry goes to Emirates first and business passengers, Emirates Skywards Platinum and Gold members, and Qantas's top frequent-flyer tiers when flying Emirates. The airline does sell entry, but only to passengers on its own flights: US$125 for Skywards members, US$155 for everyone else, plus UK VAT, for up to four hours before departure, priced in dollars even from a UK airport.

What the ticket buys is the largest single room on this side, around 255 seats, with a full bar, a proper hot buffet and the only showers at the North Terminal. For an Emirates economy passenger facing the Dubai departure after a long morning, the paid-entry shower alone can justify the swipe. For everyone else it is a corridor window to glance through on the way to the five rooms that will take your booking.

Priority Pass opens four of the five bookable doors: No1 Lounge, My Lounge, Plaza Premium, and Clubrooms against an additional fee; Plaza Express is not in the network. Every entry is space-permitting, and North's easyJet-heavy early waves are exactly when spaces run out, so the pre-booked slot the No1-family lounges sell members for a small fee is worth its price on any school-holiday morning. Bank packages built on LoungeKey or DragonPass broadly mirror the same roster; check the scheme's own Gatwick list before relying on it.

Paying cash, the rule from the hub page applies doubly at North: two official channels sell the same rooms at different floors. On the day checked, the airport's own lounge booking page undercut No1 Lounges' own site on No1 (£38 against £40) and My Lounge (£34 against £38), and undercut Plaza on both its rooms. The gaps move daily, but two minutes comparing them is the cheapest upgrade at the airport. Many airlines also hand business-class passengers a contracted lounge here rather than running their own; if your ticket promises access, the airline's confirmation email names which of these five doors it means.

Match the room to the flight. For the 06:00 to 08:00 wave, No1, My Lounge and both Plaza rooms all open at 04:00, and the decision is food against price: a full buffet and bar at £38 to £46, or Plaza Express's lighter spread at £36 (£28 on the airport channel on the day checked). Remember the three-hour window runs from your entry slot, and time it from clearing the security queue, not from reaching the airport.

With children, My Lounge's games room and the Plaza kids' zones are the two designed answers, and Clubrooms is off the table below age 12. Without children, Clubrooms at £44 with Fast Track included is the sharpest deal in the pavilion, and the quietest seat. For an afternoon or evening departure, check the closes before paying: Plaza Express is gone by 16:00, My Lounge and Plaza Premium by 20:00, and from 21:00, when No1 shuts, the North Terminal has no lounge open at all, at which point the terminal's own bars inherit the job.