Originally Posted by
anat0l
My sister, currently flying on NH1078 in Business, was in NRT and was offered the said JPY 2000 voucher at check-in. She spent it landside with a friend and then went through to the lounge and was told that because she had used up the voucher, she was not allowed to enter the lounge.
Is this the correct protocol? I'm sure she would have told me this proviso if she had been so informed at check-in (unless it was on the voucher itself), but the way she had related it to me, she sounded as if she only found this out when she arrived at the lounge.
Personally if this is the procedure being followed, then that's just ridiculous. I realise there are capacity controls and all that jazz, but surely this is their own premium passengers and they choose to blatantly contravene the rules in this way. It's not as if my sister was a *G flying Y, which I could understand would be amongst the first people to be subject to capacity controls. They could have even directed her to use the United Club. (I would have told her to do that too, but she only got in contact with me about 1.5 hours before her boarding time, so it was fairly moot at that point).
I have already fired off a message of complaint to ANA. Disappointing.
This is indeed the current policy. Because the lounges are being refurbished, they are more crowded than normal. In order to relieve some of this crowding, ANA is offering these vouchers in lieu of lounge access -- if you use the voucher, you give up access to the ANA Lounges. If the check-in agent did not clearly explain that to her that is unfortunate, but the lounge agent was correct to refuse her entry. Keep in mind that this is only a temporary solution until
the refurbishment is complete at the end of March.
That being said, she could easily have gone to the UA lounge (though it might have been a bit further from her gate).