Prior to COVID-19, Virgin Australia offered lounge access for up to an hour after arrival at the destination airport to Business Class passengers and Velocity Platinum members. Arrivals lounge access was also offered, subject to availability, to Velocity Gold and Virgin Australia Lounge members.
This simple but useful benefit allows frequent flyers and Business passengers to grab a quick drink, use the bathroom or catch up on work if they arrive early at their destination. It also allows frequent flyers to get some benefit from their lounge membership if departing from an airport where no lounge is available – something that it is more common now that Virgin Australia only operates lounges at seven major airports.
Both Qantas and Virgin Australia temporarily suspended arrivals lounge access in 2020, citing state government COVID-19 regulations and capacity constraints. This seemed fair enough, although neither airline bothered to inform their customers at the time of the change in policy.
At the time, Virgin Australia told us that this change was only temporary.
“While these regulations are in place, we have temporarily paused access to eligible frequent flyers entering our lounges on arrival flights, to ensure that we comply with the government-imposed regulations, and that access is granted fairly and reasonably for eligible guests during the current climate,” a Virgin Australia Group spokesman told Australian Frequent Flyer in January 2021.
“We thank our frequent flyers for their understanding and we look forward to resuming Lounge access for eligible guests arriving on same-day Virgin Australia flights in the future.”
It’s now been more than a year since then and most of the government regulations that required airlines to limit capacity in their lounges are no longer in place. In fact, Qantas already resumed allowing its Platinum and Platinum One frequent flyers to access lounges on arrival around a year ago!
Surely, it’s now time for Virgin Australia to also bring back this benefit.
Lounge access on arrival is still specifically mentioned in section 5.3 of the Virgin Australia Lounge terms & conditions:
(a) Subject to space availability, Members, Velocity Platinum Members, Velocity Gold Members, their Invited Guests and Business Class Guests may access the Lounge in their arrival port immediately upon arrival with a Virgin Australia itinerary or boarding pass that is eligible for the day of travel. The use of the Lounge in the destination port is available to these Guests for up to 60 minutes immediately after their flight arrival.
But the Virgin Australia website has listed the following notice since January 2021:
Australian Frequent Flyer understands that many of Virgin Australia’s lounges are currently quite full, with demand for domestic travel above 2019 levels. With this in mind, Virgin may be reluctant to resume arrivals access if it could lead to some lounges becoming overcrowded at peak times.
But the majority of people entitled to use this benefit wouldn’t use it most of the time anyway, as they are keen to get to their destination as soon as possible after landing. Those who would access the lounge after arrival typically only stay for a short time, anyway – but nonetheless value the benefit (or at least the option to use it)!
Unlike over-generous status matches, this is unlikely to cause severe lounge overcrowding.
Virgin Australia Lounge showers, premium entries still out of service
Both Qantas and Virgin Australia also closed the showers in their airport lounges at the start of the pandemic, for obvious reasons.
Qantas already reopened the showers in its domestic airport lounges a year ago! But the showers in the Virgin lounges are still closed in March 2022, and we’re not really sure why.
Virgin Australia has also not yet reopened its premium lounge entries in Sydney and Brisbane, nor its premium lounge exit in Melbourne. These facilities are popular with frequent flyers as they make it possible to bypass the regular airport security queues.
The Virgin Australia website states that the airline is “assessing reopening” the premium lounge entries and exits.
The premium entry to the Qantas domestic lounge precinct in Brisbane has already been back up and running for well over a year.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Lounge access on arrival
