Originally Posted by
Often1
This whole "comity" thing is meaningless. Lounge access is about payment. When you are admitted to your operating carrier's lounge, the cost is functionally part of the ticket price. When you are admitted to another carrier's lounge, the cost is paid by your operating carrier, not the lounge operator.
Not exactly a comity issue, but just look at the way UA treats its own *G elites. If we're departing on a domestic flight, we get no access to United Club lounges. To my knowledge, UA/US are the only *A carriers that deny their own elite pax access to their own lounges. Why? It's obviously about money. UA does not want to pay to improve/expand its lounges to accommodate all of the elites flying domestically, so they came up with a rule that the travel must be int'l. Meanwhile, *G pax from other carriers flying domestically within the US get better treatment in the terminals at UA hubs than UA pax do.
And it's not like UA would have to pay another carrier to use these lounges; in theory, it should be cheaper for UA to serve UA elites because the only costs it has to pay would be the actual costs of servicing the lounge, as opposed to contributing to another carrier's profits.
Pretty sure UA/US are the only carriers that try to pull off this lame move, because it's written into the Star Alliance lounge benefits policy (and I don't see any other carriers named):
http://www.staralliance.com/en/benef...access-policy/
"United and US Airways Star Alliance Gold customers may only access the United Clubs and US Airways Clubs within the U.S. when travelling in conjunction with a Star Alliance international flight."