Why a Qantas Hawaii Lounge?

[justinbrett]

The lounge is a closet so doubt it costs much to renovate.

It must be cheaper for QF to operate their own lounge than to join AA/JL, otherwise I’m sure they would.

I think QF could make a second HNL route out of BNE work, especially now HA have terminated the route. Or at least JQ. Flip the timings to 103/104 so an early morning departure out of BNE that lands in time to connect to the AA/AS red eyes, and overnight flight home.

Also a lot of military so perhaps keeping them on side?

ADF generally don’t fly QF to HNL. Even if they did, there’s no requirement to keep them “on side” with a lounge, with the strict BFOD policies.

 

[SYD]

A similar argument could be made for many Qantas lounges: why bother with having a lounge at LHR when they've got what a couple flights a day there? And besides BA has a huge lounge presence there anyway, it seems like a total duplication of effort for such a small pay off. We could say a similar thing about domestic lounges too like Port Hedland, Mackay and dare I say it, Hobart! Not a whole lot of QF birds coming and going there which is why the lounge only opens an hour before a scheduled QF flight.

Because paid QP members (many who paid “for life” membership) travelling in whY generally can’t access OW and partner lounges. There are some specific reciprocal agreements in place (eg AA) but most of those got whittled away over the years (including BA lounge access) as OW access rules took priority and QF dumped BA in favour of EK for the bulk of Europe codeshares.

 

[RichardMEL]

I am also going to guess that LHR lounge is a "requirement" on a flagship destination/route ("kangaroo route") much like F is seen to be required. QF have high yield pax to LHR (who probably should go with the SQ's or QR's of this world, but I digress) and I see LHR as one of those legacy things that a legacy carrier like QF feels they *need* both their flagship product to and a. well.. decent... (OK CX F is better we all know) lounge - both for the paid QC members but there's that "prestige" factor from having it I daresay.

Plus of course they do serve far more pax out of LHR with currently an A380 and 787 service, and in a few years the A350's under Project Sunrise.

 

[GoldCanyon340]

I'm struggling with this thread:

a) if QF sent people to a partner lounge then people whinge
b) if QF closed the lounge then people complain, and then whinge (is that the same?)

I've visited this lounge a couple of times. Ok, get the window seat and it's all good..... otherwise it is as bad as all other US lounges (let's face it). Be thankful there actully *is* a QF operated lounge at a prettry remote (yield regardless) outstation?

 

[wannabeinvestmentbanker]

I’d say it costs too much to close down. I’ve seen that they do some pretty in depth cost benefit analysis on a close v open scenario for the yet to be utilised lounge locations in the network