Qantas Complimentary Lounge Invitation Limitations

If you have Points Club membership, Qantas Frequent Flyer Silver status or a premium Qantas co-branded credit card, you may have received some complimentary Qantas lounge invitations. These one-time passes can generally be used to access domestic Qantas Club and international Qantas Business Lounges before flying on the same day with Qantas or Jetstar.

If you don’t otherwise have access to a lounge when you fly, this is a great benefit that could make your airport experience a lot more enjoyable!

If there’s a Qantas lounge available at your departure airport, you can redeem your invitation by linking it to your Qantas or Jetstar flight at least 24 hours before departure. This can be done through the Complimentary Invitations Portal on the Qantas website or app.

Most of the time, these invitations work exactly as intended. But the complimentary lounge invitations from Qantas do have some limitations.

Which Qantas lounges accept complimentary invitations?

One major limitation is that complimentary lounge invitations are only accepted at selected lounges that are operated by Qantas. This covers the Qantas Club lounges at most domestic airports around Australia, as well as the Qantas international Business Lounges in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

But Qantas only operates its own lounges at a handful of the international destinations that it flies to. These airports are:

• Auckland
• Wellington
• Singapore
• London

Qantas also operates an international Business Lounge in Los Angeles, but complimentary lounge invitations are not accepted in Los Angeles. Qantas claims this is because it’s a “Oneworld lounge”, which frankly seems like a poor excuse.

There’s normally also a Qantas lounge in Honolulu, but this is currently closed. Qantas Business Class customers and eligible frequent flyers are being invited into the Delta Sky Club in the meantime, but lounge passes can’t be used there.

There’s no lounge access offered at any of the other international Qantas or Jetstar destinations, where Qantas normally sends its customers to third-party lounges. So, it’s not possible to use complimentary Qantas lounge invitations at airports such as Bali, Jakarta, Bangkok, Christchurch, Queenstown, Nadi, Noumea, Delhi, Dallas, Vancouver, Johannesburg or Manila.

Qantas’ lounges in Hong Kong and Tokyo’s Narita Airport closed permanently during the pandemic.

No lounge access during school holidays

Another key limitation is that Qantas can decide at any time to stop accepting these passes at any of its lounges. For example, Qantas suspended the use of complimentary lounge invitations during the recent July school holidays – as it often does during peak travel periods.

This is not a secret – there is a warning about this on the Qantas website:

The terms & conditions also state:

7.2 Qantas staff reserve the right to decline lounge access at any time, including but not limited to capacity or operational reasons.

7.3 Where Eligible Customers are declined Lounge Access due to capacity or operational reasons, they may request for a reinstatement of the Invitation, which is at Qantas’ sole discretion.

In a way, this is understandable as the lounges could become overcrowded during school holidays and at other times when flights are very full. But this is also exactly when many of the people with single-use lounge passes actually want to fly! This makes the lounge invitations effectively useless to the many people who can’t travel outside of school holidays.

If you’re flying with Jetstar, you should also be aware that the Qantas lounge may be in a different terminal and/or may not be open prior to your flight’s departure time. That’s because Qantas tends to close its airport lounges after the last Qantas flight departure for the day. (This is fair enough, but means no lounge access if you’re on a Jetstar flight leaving after the day’s last Qantas flight from that airport.)

You also can’t bring a guest into the lounge with you if you’re using a one-time pass.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Qantas Lounge Pass Access Denied Almost Everywhere

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 80 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.