Qantas international lounge Brisbane

[cutterrig]

I recently flew into BNE from HKG on QF98 in business class. I was connecting to IE 701 (which is a QF codeshare) to Honiara which left at 9am. I have a lifetime Gold QF membership. I toddled through transit security and waited for the QF departure lounge to open at 05.30. However when the lounge opened I was refused entry on the basis that it was a departure lounge not an arrivals lounge and that while I was traveling on a flight that was a codeshare I was ticketed IE. This was somewhat annoying as shower and breakfast were my goals. Unfortunately not to be. Checking the small print carefully I think the Qantas staff member who refused me entry was technically correct but commercially wrong - surely the value to the brand of extending a bit of a welcome would out weigh the cost of some hot water and a cup of coffee? Has anyone else had this lawyerish interpretation of the lounge access rules shoved in their face?

 

[henrus]

I think the Qantas staff member who refused me entry was technically correct

Yep 100% correct. As a QF Gold card holder to access a Qantas lounge your next onward boarding pass must have a flight number starting with QF Qantas if it's operated by a partner outside of the oneworld.

Qantas codeshares with a number of airlines where the same thing applies to, from Brisbane these include...
- Air Nugini
- Air Calin
- Air Vanuatu
- China Airlines
- Fiji Airways
- Solomon Airlines

But the same thing also applies to all of these airlines:

Air France, Air Tahiti Nui, Air New Zealand, Air North, Alaska Airlines, Asiana Airlines, Bangkok Airways, China Southern, El Al, KLM and WestJet.

Qantas has more partners outside of the oneworld than they do inside so I can see why it's confusing for passengers. Whilst it would be nice for them to just 'let you in' you also have to remember that in a lot of cases the QF codeshare for the same flight is much more expensive than the original flight so from Qantas' perspective if you wanted lounge access then you should have paid more to them in the first place.

Finally (and sure I'm a little biased here), I think Brisbane is the nicest international terminal of all the international terminals in Australia so a few hours in the departure lounge isn't the worst thing in the world.

 

[Deleted member]

Not sure, but a seat in J “may” have alleviated that issue.
Interestingly a WP in HIR on Sol Air can use their lounge but not from BNE

 

[Tallfont]

I remember many, many years ago travelling PER-BNE on QF and then BNE-POM on PX. Only problem was the PX heritage 767 went mechanical.
The Qantas staff on the Brisbane lounge eventually took pity on me and a couple of others and allowed us entry. Once inside there was a group of expats all in the same situation.
The replacement PX plane - a F100 or might have even been a F28 in those days eventually took off about 20:00. Around 11 hours late.
During that time our little group managed to clean them out of Crown Lager, Baileys, Gin and most of the Vodka. I have very little memory of the flight to Port Moresby