Brittany Romano, 32, was not looking to start her own long-distance rom-com last September when she showed up to JetBlue’s lounge at Kennedy International Airport 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.
Brittany Romano, 32, started a long-distance relationship in the JetBlue lounge at J.F.K.
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.