Originally Posted by
CrazyJ82
Before everyone gets too worked up, a couple points: If you're SL, you're not necessarily at an airport that often in the grand scheme of things. If they're going to give out vouchers (which already is more generous than other oneworld programs at the ruby level) you may well be covered for many of your airport visits.
+1
While on technical terms the change seem bad, I don't think it is such a material loss to be honest, as far as lounge access is concerned.
SL means the most you'd ever fly is still less than 60k miles a year, which means in long haul terms you are at the airport for less than 12 flights a year (thats assuming 5000 miles on average in Y). Remembering that this is the high end estimate, where on the other spectrum, if an SL is 'just' hitting the 30k each year that's just 6 flights each year at the airport with CX. If you have a habit of flying other OW carriers (where SLs don't get access in the first place I understand?), then this number of actual flights drops even further.
So with that in mind, I'd say its still pretty good if you are getting say 4 lounge vouchers out of the 6~12 flights each year and this is very generous compared to other OW carriers (not even looking at QR here).
The only people that will suffer a lot are the intra-asia flyers that maintain SL based on club sectors, where the amount of lounge passes will no where near match the 20~40 sectors required. However on the flipside, lounge access is less important for shorter flights as there's less of a need to 'freshen up' to enjoy two hours of flying vs. 12 hours.