Cathay Pacific Lounge

Cathay Pacific stopped using its own PEN lounge after 2020

This Cathay Pacific Lounge in Penang T1 is effectively history now; FlyerTalk regulars report it shut during the pandemic and never came back. The space used to sit by the other third-party lounges airside, but current Cathay boarding passes send you elsewhere.

Instead of reopening this lounge in T1, Cathay now directs eligible passengers to the adjacent Plaza Premium Lounge next door. One FlyerTalk member spells it out clearly: “CX now sends all guests to the adjacent Plaza Premium lounge next door,” and nobody in recent years reports getting into a branded CX space here.

The old Cathay lounge at PEN reportedly closed during the COVID period around 2020, with one traveler noting “it was shuttered during the pandemic.” Since then, there have been no fresh photos, no new reviews, and no updated hours posted by Cathay or the airport for this location.

Because the lounge is shut, there’s nothing current to say on food, showers, alcohol brands, or seating beyond historical anecdotes. Any pre-2020 review you see online about the Cathay-branded room in Penang T1 is now basically archival reading, not trip-planning material.

What regulars do now: when flying Cathay out of Penang T1, they walk to Plaza Premium and use that instead. If you have Cathay status or fly in a premium cabin, your lounge invite typically prints for Plaza Premium on the boarding pass, and check-in staff at PEN confirm that’s the only option.

Watch out for outdated blog posts and Google Maps entries still listing “Cathay Pacific Lounge” as open in Penang with generic “06:00–22:00” hours; recent forum threads on Flyertalk from 2022 onward say it remains closed, so don’t plan a tight airport meal around a lounge that no longer operates.

Practical tip: treat Penang as a Plaza Premium station for Cathay; head airside in T1 at least 75 minutes before departure so you have time to find that lounge instead of hunting for a Cathay sign that isn’t in use anymore.