Qantas First Lounge in Singapore

[timmy-t]

I’m in the new lounge now.

Pretty standard boxy layout as already mentioned.

More a dining space than “lounging” space

Place is well overcrowded. (Not enough seats. People are having to wait)

Food is good.

Service is good. (Though they are a bit stressed due to the volume of guests)

All in all it’s a tick from me.

Come and say hi. I’m at the kitchen bar seats. Blue tshirt.

 

[timmy-t]

Six chefs in the kitchen, cranking out the food no tables left have to sit at the bar

 

[moa999]

A lot of singles at 2-seaters

 

[grrofunger]

People having to wait??
Maybe they will have to start putting restrictions on entry.
Would be more than a little annoyed if I was a F passenger and was told to wait for a seat

Yes there were guests having to stand and wait for dining space.

 

[grrofunger]

Come and say hi. I’m at the kitchen bar seats. Blue tshirt.

Sorry mate. I’ve left.

Sitting in the glass cage now waiting to board.

 

[Rangalad]

You must have been flying J.

My bad. Yes I was.

 

[jpp42]

A lot of singles at 2-seaters

I would be happy to share a 2-seater with a stranger instead of having to wait. Especially in a situation like the lounge where everything is free / included. But I feel like some people would be offended if this were even suggested.

I do remember the Mel F lounge where they had a large table where they sat singles who weren't afraid to share. And the HKG lounge too. Sounds like they may need to consider this here.

 

[kermatu]

I’m already wondering what measures Qantas may need to take to thin out the crowd, because ‘standing room only’ is not good, especially in these very early days and doubly so if passengers are doing the QF2 transit and have limited time to begin with.

Hopefully the response isn't to have another general DSC promo and create more Platinums...

I presume the official opening will be well outside this peak period.

QF must have known the lounge would overflow. Limited space to be fair. I guess that is in part why there aren't any special features (Spa, private rooms etc). As nice as I'm sure it will be to visit, once I heard there wasn't a spa I was never that excited about this lounge.

That said, I'm genuinely glad QF has gone to the effort of opening a new lounge. Personally I'm quite happy to lounge hop between the 2 QF lounges and BA and EK to suit my particular needs/desires at the time (usually just some peace and quiet).

 

[amaroo]

Lounge looks good - nice job QF!

 

[Himeno]

A lot of people who actually know the lounge access rules had been going to the BA lounge when the QF lounge was full.
With the new lounge open, there is likely a number of those people who had been going to the other oneworld lounges (or to EK) checking out the new F lounge.

Seems like a case of the highway problem.
Add more lanes to the highway due to congestion, and it just leads to more traffic as the people who hadn't been using the highway, now do.

 

[levelnine]

Seems like a case of the highway problem.
Add more lanes to the highway due to congestion, and it just leads to more traffic as the people who hadn't been using the highway, now do.

That's not quite true. There's a finite set of people entitled to access a OWE lounge at the airport at any one time. Qantas would have data on how many eligible people are likely to be in the terminal at different times of the day and they simply failed to make the space big enough to hold that number. They would have known that most OWEs will use the lounge because there are no other true first class lounges in the terminal. It's a simple Qantas fail. It's only going to get worse as more people become aware of the lounge.

The better analogy is building a 8 seat table knowing that you're going to have 20 people over for Christmas lunch and being shocked that not everyone has somewhere to sit.

 

[RooFlyer]

Pretty poor planning on the part of QF that they did not correctly estimate how many guests they would have and therefore failed to provide enough seating for everyone.

Yeah - everyone, or certain people, keep saying how Qantas are masters of the data on flyers etc etc.

I do remember the Mel F lounge where they had a large table where they sat singles who weren't afraid to share. And the HKG lounge too. Sounds like they may need to consider this here.

Yeah - that's the solution many restaurants use - shared large tables, or at-bar dining. Another way would be those small, high round tables with a stool. Can take 2 at a pinch, but an efficient way to take care of singles.

Its looking like a major stuff-up by Qantas. Hopefully the crowds will scare people off by the time I get there.

 

[Kangol]

Was there another option to build a lounge in a larger space? That could be the deciding factor.

 

[DavidFlynn]

There's a finite set of people entitled to access a OWE lounge at the airport at any one time. Qantas would have data on how many eligible people are likely to be in the terminal at different times of the day and they simply failed to make the space big enough to hold that number. They would have known that most OWEs will use the lounge because there are no other true first class lounges in the terminal. It's a simple Qantas fail.

Qantas definitely kept track of the numbers on SIN J lounge attendees who would be F lounge eligible, including those who bailed from the BA Lounge – basically every F flyer and WP/P1/CL/OWE passenger who passed through the doors of the SIN lounge. I believe it was in the range of 150-200. This was then used as a baseline for planning F lounge capacity, and exceeded to the lounge's 240 seating capacity.

There are obvious constraints on the physical space available – an airline can only take the space made available to them by the airport authority - so if we assume that no additional space was available, it arguably comes down to two things (which are not mutually exclusive)
1. Excessive demand well beyond forecast
2. Layout of the space not being optimised for the demand we're now seeing

(1) is hard to predict, because it it could be predicted it likely would have been. If you see 150-200 F lounge-worthy pax in the J lounge and build to a 240 seat capacity that's a good margin.

Note however that in the pics being shared there are plenty of empty seats, they're just at a two-person dining table where the other seat is occupied.

So this is an example of where a headcount alone doesn't yield the best data because it's not based on solo travellers vs pairs/groups. Can't fault that as this is a bit more difficult to track on a simple 'tally at the front desk' basis and harder when done using data post-match, but it's an undeniable psychological thing, and you could run a guesstimate based on bookings (solo vs pairs) rather than lounge entry.

One solution, which now appears obvious when seen in the rear-view mirror, might have been to have long tables à la SIN J lounge. I think that would definitely work because hey, a seat is a seat, and if I'm in transit on QF2 and want my s&p squid and a glass of bubbles, I won't be too choosy about where that seat is if it means I don't have to stand for 10 minutes sans squid and champers.

But let me suggest that this long communal dining bench might not have been considered sufficiently 'premium' and that given that people criticise the SIN J lounge for this and describe it as looking a bit like a Singaporean hawker centre or a food court, that same response may well have been triggered and amplified x100 if there was such as communal dining table in the F lounge.

Another way would be those small, high round tables with a stool. Can take 2 at a pinch, but an efficient way to take care of singles.

That strikes me as a very smart way to encourage sharing without a single long table.

Either way, I'm going to ask QF about the crowding issue at the media launch because this is an issue worth looking into.

 

[RooFlyer]

If you see 150-200 F lounge-worthy pax in the J lounge and build to a 240 seat capacity that's a good margin.

But you’d think they might also have thought of the additional OW Emerald pax at Changi who would be attracted to a First lounge. That seems to be the current issue.

That strikes me as a very smart way to encourage sharing without a single long table.

Yes it’s what’s done in theconstantly overcrowded HBA QP.

 

[DavidFlynn]

But you’d think they might also have thought of the additional OW Emerald pax at Changi who would be attracted to a First lounge. That seems to be the current issue.

I think that's the key here, and that's sadly a bit of an X-factor – would QF have visibility on the number of OWE's flying out on other airlines? There's only so much rounding-up one can do or that is wise to do in an instance like this. I'm still of the opinion that the number of non-T1 OWEs at the F lounge would be negligible. Hell, I know some QF Golds and Platinums who didn't realise they could use any OW lounge instead of a QF lounge or the QF-recommended lounge.

Who knows, this could end up being a semi-QR play (but also used initially by CX at SFO) where the lounge is nominally for QF pax only. Oneworld requires that a lounge be available for status members but as long as you don't have the only lounge in the terminal/airport and there is no alternative provided, you can limit access (and of course 'subject to capacity' is a handy footnote to invoke).

 

[RooFlyer]

. I'm still of the opinion that the number of non-T1 OWEs at the F lounge would be negligible.

you are very well placed to hold that opinion, but if so, where the hell are all these people coming from?

Edit. Ah I see you say none T1 OWEs.

Possibly, but there would still be a heap of T1 OWEs that Qantas seemingly didn’t count on.

 

[DavidFlynn]

Was there another option to build a lounge in a larger space? That could be the deciding factor.

As far as I know, this was the largest space available at the time.

 

[DavidFlynn]

you are very well placed to hold that opinion, but if so, where the hell are all these people coming from?
Edit. Ah I see you say none T1 OWEs.
Possibly, but there would still be a heap of T1 OWEs that Qantas seemingly didn’t count on.

Well, there are two issues: first is seating being inclined towards tables for two when most flyers are solo. So it's not as though there are no seats, it's more that there are no tables, if that makes sense, as people tend not to 'share'.

I do wonder if there's another factor here, and this is pure speculation without any solid grounds: what if, between the time that QF locked down the capacity/config and when the lounge opened (my understanding is that there was probably at least a year between those milestones, based on the Feb 2019 VR preview/walkthough of the lounge which showed config as we now see it), there was a rise beyond the expected trend in WP membership? If QF predicted P growth at a norm of say 2% but for whatever reason (and maybe fuelled by DSC offers?) it grew to 5% or whatever, this might have impacted too.

Again, pure unfounded speculation (and no doubt fuel for those who want to see an end to wide-open DSC offers!), but we're trying to account for an X-factor here.

 

[Princess Fiona]

At least they have Taittinger; The MEL/SYD F lounges are down to Mumm.

Pommery and Mumm Rosé but you can get the very drinkable Perrier-Jouët