CBR Qantas Club & Business Lounge Swap Locations

[Flyingwombat]

What a shame! I’m still a lowly Gold so I thoroughly enjoyed the views that the CBR QC lounge provided. I was similarly disappointed when they did the same change at MEL many years ago. I’ve got a photo or two somewhere of me as a kid in the old QC facing the B gates but I don’t think I’ve been in there since it changed to the business lounge.
The international business lounge is a bit dim too, being downstairs with no natural light, let alone my much desired aircraft view.
Oh well, I’m definitely still grateful to have any lounge access at all. A view-less Qantas club is still better than nothing!

Yes MEL was my home port when I was travelling every fortnight domestically and I loved the views from the far end of the previous QC... had my fave seat. Sadly now the QC is horrible and I rarely travel J so don't get to see the planes...

 

[dmgale]

Had a brief chat to the lounge attendant on the J side again this morning, asking how the change was going.

Plenty of confusion at both entrances as I guess most people are on auto-pilot if they’ve been to either lounge in the past.

Main driver apparently was expected increased demand for the business lounge (hard to see given you can’t even book a flight to Sydney that actually has a business cabin these days), as well as better handling the common periods where the lounges are merged.

No complaints from me though, sitting on nice new chairs with a view of the runway, enjoying the pancake machine that only seems to exist in Qantas Clubs, is a much nicer experience.

They still haven’t found the paper towels for the toilets though…

The old business lounge had a pancake machine! Well it did last time I was there.
Canberrans demand pancakes whichever longe they are visiting!

 

[L2.]

Virtually all of the flights out these days are in Dash8s, including to Hobart, Brisbane, and Melbourne, so I'd say the number of J seats available have fallen.

It seems to fluctuate quite a lot on a day-to-day basis. Some days of the week have a healthy number of A220 flights, and others barely have any.

The once daily non-stop flight to Perth (using a 737) seems these days to be the only regular operation of a mainline Qantas aircraft, as opposed to QantasLink.

I get the economics of why they're using smaller planes, but from my perspective not being locked into either carrier, it's the reason why I usually book VA on CBR-MEL flights these days.