I think that this is incorrect;. Both my wife and I are lifetime UA MP Platinum members and she was not allowed to take her friend into the BNE VA lounge with her on paid BNE-CBR tickets. However, in SYD, they were both allowed to enter the domestic lounge. It seems that Sydney is being over generous, because my read of the VA rules suggests that the Brisbane lounge dragon was correct (no guest entry for UA elites).
The rules on lounge access are pretty clear when it comes to accessing Virgin lounges as a
United *Gold member:
If your eligible Partner Airline membership allows you to bring in a guest, they must be travelling on the same Virgin Australia flight. Additional guests are any guests aged 2 years and over. Infants under the age of 2 can enter for free. Access on arrival is not permitted.
United Premier Gold or better provides lounge access for you and a guest travelling on United, Star Alliance or a partner airline like Virgin Australia. If you receive any pushback from the lounge, tell them to refer to their intranet on lounge access as they have a document that spells out the entitlements for each elite member. This is what happened when I was travelling in Perth as the agents weren't sure of the access rights and pulled up the document. Sure enough United Premier Gold could bring themselves and a guest in.
In fact, after much argument (my wife's very good at that) with the Brisbane lounge staff, the dragon phoned the Sydney lounge who confirmed that they did give them entry, so the Brisbane dragon condescended to allow them both in, on a "once only" basis. So there you go.
They need to read the document on their intranet that spells out lounge access. It clearly says United Premier Gold or better has access for themselves and a guest, the agent in Perth literally showed me the document.
I've flown on VA a lot over the last couple of years: enough to easily maintain Platinum status using the current rules, without too much help along the way (e.g. no status pooling, all on VA - no partner airlines). As I'm upset about the upcoming changes, I'm looking at which FF programs are candidates to possibly obtain lifetime status with my VA flying (with maybe a couple of extra flights on the home airline's flights).
First things first. Don't get emotional over the whole thing. Remember what I always tell people, loyalty to airlines is a one-way street: they have to be loyal to me but we never have to be loyal to them. So the rational thing to do right now is see whether you can earn retain status before the enhancements go into place. In particular, it's my understanding that bookings made before sometime in April will count towards the old status credit accrual. So it may make sense to retain your current Platinum status for now, particularly if your review date is within the next several months.
With your Virgin Platinum status in hand for another year, well now you've got some breathing room to look at your options. In particular, you should take time to review what the requirements are for the various programs. A quick look on Youtube and Flyertalk will have videos and articles describing the various programs out there. What I will say is what makes sense for one person may not make sense for another. Lifetime status is nice, yes, but you need to find a way for it to work for you. In my case, I'm committing to Qantas because they have a decent way of earning lifetime status even if you don't live in Australia.
One thing you should remind yourself is now that you hold status with an airline you literally hold all the cards. I know that may seem impossible to believe, but that is the reality now. Most airlines will provide status matches which will let you earn that airline's frequent flyer status for considerably less. In my case when I moved to Australia, I noticed Qantas had a status match promotion on where I could match my United Premier Gold status over to Qantas Gold for a year by simply earning 100 status credits on flights, which was done by flying a single trip on Qantas: Sydney > Darwin > Melbourne > Sydney during a double status credit promotion. The cost was around $600 booked as a red e-deal back in 2021. I did the same trick this year as a newly minted Qantas Platinum, I status matched over to LATAM paying the $80 USD fee in that case to earn Black status through March 31, 2025. Among the many benefits I got included 8 upgrade certificates which I applied on two flights my partner and I were taking (Melbourne to Santiago and São Paulo to New York) to move from economy to business class. Arguably the best $80 I've spent in a while. Again, you'll need to do homework here to see what status match promotions there are and whether any of it makes sense for you.
Are you able to explain more about their PQPs and how to obtain status with them (if not the right area to ask, I can raise this question in the UA forum)? Are there a minimum number of UA flights required for annual and lifetime status?
You'll need to look that one up as there is a lot involved there. With that being said, I will make several extraordinary simplifications to begin to convey what is involved. If you're flying United Airlines you will earn 1 PQP per USD spent on a flight (excluding some taxes and charges). For other partners including Virgin Australia, PQP is computed as a function of distance flown divided by a magic number. The magic number for Virgin Australia is 5. A business fare will earn between 125% to 150% of mileage flown. So a flight between Sydney to Melbourne is 439 miles meaning the award mileage accrual is either 549 miles or 659 miles. Now take that number and divide by 5 and you'll either earn 110 PQP or 131.8 For Gold you need to earn 8,000 PQP and 24 qualifying segments flown on United and partners or 10,000 PQP meaning as little as 72 flights between Sydney and Melbourne in business will do the trick. Now obviously that's not a very cost advantageous way of earning status. Where it gets interesting is international long haul in business class (or better yet consolidator fares on United, a topic which I cannot spend any time talking about but you are free to investigate that rabbit hole on your own), but even there you'll still have to do a decent bit of flying. Oh and remember, you need to fly 4 segments on flights operated by United Airlines to earn status in any calendar year. For Lifetime status, nothing matters. Once you cross the 1,000,000 miles flown on paid United tickets, you've got Gold status for life. You don't need to even set foot on a United aircraft to keep or enjoy those benefits.
So, you're saying that to maintain UA status, you need to take 4 UA-marketed flights a year? I'd like to ask more about this: should I do that in the UA forum?
The
United Airlines forum on FlyerTalk is probably your best bet
Agree; that’s one of the worst features of the Virgin status thing. The lounges are always crowded except when they open Sydney upstairs.
Wait there's an upstairs level to the Sydney lounge? I thought that was permanently closed! Would be curious what that looks like.
And of course, no lounge at HBA at all, but I don’t think that’s entirely VA‘s fault.
The Virgin Australia lounge at HBA is easily way better than the Qantas Club.
And I’m sorry to those who may fall from ‘grace’, but a reduction in the number of elites is very much needed. As the saying goes “when everyone has status, no-one has status“.
That's correct although one must wonder how big of an issue that was for them. Lounges may have been packed but one must wonder how much of that was from travellers with status versus those on a business ticket or with a credit card?
One of the problems in MEL is the lack of staff to clear up. Tables are often piled high with used crockery during the busiest periods.
And they run out of plates and bowls as well 
I wonder why that is?
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