Originally Posted by
PiperAtGatesofDawn
This is a very recent change that UA made to stop *Gs from entering contract lounges and is already enforced in BOM & DEL.
They also forced *A to change their *G lounge access policy from "all *G's in Y have to be given contract lounge access" to "all *Gs in Y may be given lounge access to contract lounges".
None of the other *A partners has followed suit as yet... but I suspect LH might be next to do this and AI at some point too.
On 4 separate occasions in the past 2 weeks, I was always granted access to the contract lounges in BOM and HYD as a United *G traveling in economy. In each case, my UA number was in my reservation, and invitation cards were provided at checkin automatically, I never had to ask.
1. BOM - TK ticket - arrived from IST, had a connecting AI flight to JGA (same ticket). Given an invite card to the GVK Lounge (Domestic) during checkin with AI
2. BOM - AI ticket BOM-HYD - Given invite card to the GVK Lounge (Domestic) during checkin with AI
3. HYD - AI ticket HYD-BOM. Despite being a wholly-domestic flight, it had an international flight number, thus departed from international gate at HYD. Given an invite card to the Plaza Premium Lounge on the international side during checkin with AI
4. BOM - TK ticket BOM-IST - Given invite card to the GVK East Lounge (International) during checkin with TK.