Qantas announced last week that it will soon finally commence the long-awaited upgrade to its Auckland Airport heritage site lounge precinct that was first announced in 2018, but delayed by the pandemic.
The current separate Business and First Lounges in Auckland will be combined to create a single Qantas International Lounge, similar to the one in London.
Qantas promises that the redesigned lounge will become a “modern pre-flight oasis” showcasing the best of local New Zealand design, food and wine. The new Qantas International Lounge in Auckland will also include new amenities designed for people travelling long-haul.
The new lounge space will be larger than both of the current lounges combined, as its footprint will also be expanded into an adjacent space. The total capacity of the new lounge will be 340 seats, which is around a 40% increase.
Qantas says the design process will begin soon and that building work will be staggered so that the lounge remains operational throughout the construction phase. Ideally, the new space will be up and running in time for the launch of Qantas’ new Sydney-Auckland-New York service in mid-June 2023.
This lounge upgrade is long overdue
Clearly, the upgraded Qantas lounge in Auckland will be a huge improvement. The current offering is just no match for Air New Zealand’s flagship international lounge at the same airport, let alone the neighbouring Emirates Lounge.
The Air New Zealand lounge even includes an open-air patio, perfect for getting some fresh air before or after a long-haul flight.
By comparison, many AFF members affectionately call the existing Qantas First Lounge in Auckland the “First Class closet” due to its size and lack of amenities. Prior to the pandemic, it even become a running joke among some Platinum frequent flyers that the shower in the Auckland First Lounge was always out of order. Some suspected that the room was being used as a cupboard, as this was not fixed for over a year.
I’ll still miss the current lounges
At the same time, on a personal level, I’ll be sad to see the current lounges go.
As a child in the 1990s, I often travelled on Qantas with my family to visit relatives in Auckland. This was a totally different era, with Boeing 767s and Boeing 747s gracing the skies across the Tasman. Some of my earliest memories are of flying with Qantas to Auckland at a time when in-flight movies were played from a video projector and I was kept entertained by kids activity packs featuring Wallace & Gromit and Max Altitude playing cards.
Over the following couple of decades, the experience of flying Qantas across the Tasman has totally changed. But one thing hasn’t changed – the Qantas lounges in Auckland.
Qantas has made a few minor improvements to its Auckland lounge over recent years, such as replacing a few items of worn-out furniture. When the lounge reopened after the COVID-19 shutdown on 30 June 2022, Qantas also added a barista coffee cart in a corner. But this lounge still features that distinctive 1990s design that was common at Qantas lounges all over the world at the time.
One by one, the rest of the lounges in Qantas’ network have since been refurbished, upgraded or permanently closed. But the Auckland lounge is one of the last places on the Qantas network where I really feel like I’m stepping back in time – in a good way. I feel a great sense of nostalgia every time I enter the Auckland lounge as it reminds me of how great it was flying Qantas in my childhood.
Perhaps the only other lounge in the Qantas network that still feels like it belongs in the 1990s is the one in Honolulu. The Qantas Honolulu Business Lounge is currently closed while a “light refresh to furniture and amenities” is completed. While this is definitely needed, there’s a small part of me – for nostalgic reasons – that hopes this refresh will indeed just be a very light one.
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