FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - VS to join Skyteam in early 2023
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Old Mar 5, 2023 | 11:21 am
  #30  
orbitmic
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Originally Posted by San Gottardo
I would have found it the right move to at least let ULTIs into the VS lounge when flying on KL or AF.
I think that would have been extremely unlikely to be honest in the sense that it is important to remember that Ulti does not actually mean anything beyond AF and KL just like GGL or Premier doesn't mean anything beyond BA and Hon Circle doesn't mean anything beyond the LH Group. When we get any of those status and fly on partner airlines, for better or worse, we are "downgraded" to standard alliance top tier I guess bar exceptional agreements (e.g. There is a minimal reciprocal agreement between AA Concierge Key and BA GGL and Prem).

In fact, of all those, you could even make the case that Ulti would be the least likely to be pampered by partners to the extent that it is the one status which is based solely on flights that are AF-KL marketed, so in many ways, explicitly discourage partners' usage. In that sense, I just don't see ST partners going out of their way to give Ulti special treatment.

Paradoxically, things might be easier with lounges of non-ST airines because AF-KL would of course have the possibility to have a specific contract with a given lounge for their F or Ulti passengers (in the same way that when you fly AF P from LAX, AF pays QF to give you access to the QF F lounge even though there is the KE (ST) lounge available. That would be AF-KL decision to contract and pay for. With ST lounges, however, the situation is normally reversed (ie airlines do not charge each other as far as I am aware as they automatically provide partner lounge access as a result of the partnership itself), which is why VS would have no incentive to treat Ulti any better than any other ST E+ and why AF-KL has no real bargaining chip to encourage them to do any more than whatever the alliance commits them to for Elite Plus. The double mystery (to me anyway) is why the alliance allowed them to commit to less than the norm, and why they would allow them to exclude two eligible ST E+ statuses (FB G and DL G) from access! We must have some star negotiators at Skyteam!!!
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