Qantas is phasing out the card-sized Qantas Club lounge passes that come with certain credit cards and are given out to Qantas flyers with Silver-level status. These physical passes will instead by replaced by digital passes that can be accessed online.
The reason for the change would appear to be to combat the sale of lounge passes – which is against Qantas’ rules – on websites such as EBay and Gumtree.
It will still be possible to “gift” digital lounge passes to friends and relatives, provided they are a member of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program.
IIRC they mentioned that they will still be transferable electronically
You can only be a QF member to use a pass now. Cant be a non member, other alliance member or even skywards member traveling on QF. “Computer says NO”. Or here is a free it will cost you $80 to use it.
The new system may place some new restrictions on the use of passes, but it will make it much easier for Qantas to track any transfers. This will make it easier for the airline to cancel passes that have been bought and sold online.
This will mean that they can more easily check for suspicious transfers of guest passes if they want to.
While the transition takes place, both physical and digital lounge passes will be accepted at the doors of domestic Qantas Club and international Qantas Business lounges. There’s no indication at this stage of when the paper-based passes will no longer be accepted, but all physical passes will continue to be accepted until their expiry date.
I wonder if the sales issue was been the driver and how long it will take to transition. I’ve received paper passes that expired in 15 months time so probably take a long time to transition totally to digital.
Virgin Australia already distributes lounge passes – such as the two lounge visits given to Silver Velocity members – electronically. Virgin’s lounge passes are not transferrable.
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Read more: Qantas Now Selling Lounge Passes
