Qantas Club members' lounge access in continental Europe decimated by EK deal

[BD1959]

Until Fools-Day you could access a lounge in every port when you flew EU-LHR-SIN-AU holding a QF-Club or Oneworld status.

Now you fly EU-DXB-AU and you have no access to a Lounge in all EU ports.
So this is clearly an other devaluation after the culling of the general BA lounge access.

The "Fly more" suggestion is arrogant!

I would suggest to check other airlines. Some offer quite nice Business Class deals! Build a status with an other alliance/airline may not do the trick - OP has not reached a status with QF - so likely it would be very hard to get a status with an other airline.

But wait: Within *A there are quite nice options with a *G Status. Aegean comes to my mind. Just one AU-EU trip booked in the right booking classes gives you access to all *A Lounges! You may consider that!
If QF does clearly tell you that they do not want your business: Do not cry - move on!

... and the relevance of most of your post against my quoted post?

You speak of QC access - I was comparing QF status access versus OW status access.

You speak of the "fly more" suggestion as being arrogant - that wasn't me.

You suggest I check other airlines ... I'm probably not going to be flying to Europe, if I do I have SG status so would have access.

etc etc etc

Regards,

BD

 

[opusman]

Until Fools-Day you could access a lounge in every port when you flew EU-LHR-SIN-AU holding a QF-Club or Oneworld status.

Presumably there's nothing stopping you booking EU-LHR-SIN-AU even after the changeover, in which case lounge access would be unchanged.
All that's happened is you no longer need to transit LHR; for a lot of people the advantages of that would more than make up for the lack of lounge access.

 

[timster]

Presumably there's nothing stopping you booking EU-LHR-SIN-AU even after the changeover, in which case lounge access would be unchanged.
All that's happened is you no longer need to transit LHR; for a lot of people the advantages of that would more than make up for the lack of lounge access.

Unchanged ? Did I miss something ?

EU-LHR ... no EU lounge access for paid QP, as there was before.
LHR-SIN ... no longer flown by QF, so no access to any lounge at LHR for that route for paid QP

And if we do take the 'advantage' of avoiding LHR, QP no longer has access to any EU lounge when outbound EU-DXB. And IMHO I found LHR inbound / outbound transits fine with BA lounge access, and with a wider range of EU destinations than EK. There are transit delays from QF onto those EK connections to EU ports in DXB.

 

[timster]

But wait: Within *A there are quite nice options with a *G Status. Aegean comes to my mind. Just one AU-EU trip booked in the right booking classes gives you access to all *A Lounges! You may consider that!
If QF does clearly tell you that they do not want your business: Do not cry - move on!

Thanks for the tip. I signed up for the free Aegean FF program in 5 minutes. Definitely the quickest way to *A Gold, which then does give access to all *A lounges. Only 20,000 pts required, which I may even manage in economy. The other advantage is that I can credit flights via Asia to Europe with SQ/TG etc to Aegean (at 1.0 per mile in economy), which would replace the loss of my previously preferred QF longhauls to Europe with stopovers via Asia (I have nil interest in Dubai).

My QP membership still has over a year left on it. So I'll give QF that time to restore its previous value if it's at all interested. But in the meantime I'll start flying *A so by the time QP comes up for renewal I'll have a clear choice. But after 20 years with QP for me and my work colleagues, it's looking like a done deal.

Am also looking at Priority Pass etc. for ad hoc lounge access.

 

[mannej]

I find it funny a poster refers to the fact that a post is arrogant as it tells someone to fly more, yet they then suggest the OP flys Business. That may not be a possibility.

Kettle and black comes to mind...