Re: No access to Cathay lounge in SF
I think Dallas/Fort Worth would need to be a priority ahead of SFO. The 3rd party lounge at DFW is pretty cough, the American Express Centurion Lounge beats it by a mile. In fact I noticed that the AMEX lounge give QANTAS boarding announcements (AFAIK they give no other announcements) and the gate is right across from the lounge.
That is unusual for the Amex lounge to announce those boarding announcements.
There's no real stand out lounges at DFW. Many may just retire to the AA lounge for the improved ambience, even if almost everything else consumable is for cash.
Here's the thing, though. QF only operates one flight a day to DFW, SFO and JFK. What hope is there for a lounge in either of those, and why should one be prioritised over the other? Moreover, for any of those airports, where is QF going to get the space without needing to kill someone?
As a side note I remember discussing lounge access at the BA lounge at Dulles (Washington). He said BA honoured the OneWorld access for everyone except AA. I was flying on an AA flight but was granted access due to being a QF WP. The guy said the problem was there were so many AA Executive Platinum members (think about that when you are trying to get OW Emerald via AA Challenge)
People have been saying across the BA network in the USA that those flying on AA were being knocked back for lounge access. I've heard various reports of either those flying on AA, to only AA elites, or even they are only allowing in BA elites. BA can be annoying like that. Long time ago at LHR, they were knocking back QF Platinums at the First Lounges in T5, or any oneworld elites in general.
I wonder how many AA EXPs there really are and why that should cause a major problem. This new alliance between AA and BA and others is new but the flying between those respective cities and thus having other members access each others lounges is not a new thing.
Finally, there are very limited challenges (mostly selective ones, not ones you can pay for) that allow one to run up for AA EXP. I don't think those would have had a big difference.
SFO used to have an AA lounge didn't it? (I'm thinking 10-15 years ago. I just don't book via SFO (perhaps this is why QF sell seats for almost half the price of DFW on sale)
According to the
oneworld website, they still do, but it is located in Terminal 2 at SFO, not the International Terminal.
According to the same website, the description of the CX Lounge gives the capacity of the lounge at "over 100 seats".