This move makes perfect sense, because Air New Zealand is clearly incurring many millions of dollars in direct cost by allowing their top tier flyers to access their lounges for a few minutes on arrival, as they proceed to drink the bar dry, eat all the food and use hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loo paper.

What makes this all the more galling is that, even if this were the case (which for the avoidance of doubt, it is not), is that the new guest policy that has just been announced will result in more crowding and consumption of variable costs than the odd arrivals access ever has.

Even more to the point, this implies that someone is being paid to think up devaluations to the value proposition to the airline's top customers.