No - I wont cut QF a break.
I agree - no reason to cut them any slack; I know that your assessment is not necessarily based on an "isolated incident".
It is
still a good lounge, but the premium shine it had before is starting to decay off.
As far as
First Class Lounges go, the consensus of the top 3 seems to be Thai, Lufthansa and Qatar.
Which is kind of fine with me (I don't agree with Thai being in the top 3 myself), but Qantas should definitely be in the top 10.
The World Airline Awards only measure the top 3. And Forbes must be either only going for Business Class lounges and/or they have rocks in their head, because I can hardly agree with their list of the top ten lounges (i.e. not all of those that they have listed).
I shouldn't have to ask for toiletries, this is a 1st class establishment - regardless of the reasons the toiletries are missing.
Well, if people are ducking into empty suites and nicking more than their share, it does start to get beyond Qantas' control, but in saying that they should start instigating a stricter system.
One of the main curses that SYD QF F has is that it needs to cater for a far larger number of pax than its MEL counterpart. It probably has to handle at least twice as many pax as MEL does, but it is hardly twice as big, and the service / staff loading is hardly scaled up to that multiple either. When it first opened, it was probably fine, but it's barely cutting mustard now.
I definitely enjoy my time at the MEL F Lounge more than the SYD one, even if we discount the less flights at MEL meaning a quieter lounge. (Why isn't the MEL QF F Lounge in the top 10 F Lounges in the world???)