Originally Posted by
KingCanute
Indeed, and this is not new. This has been policy for many years. Points and promotional upgrades merely get you a better seat and on board service, nothing more.
To receive all of the benefits of a premium J or F ticket, you have to pay the fare difference to have your ticket reissued in a J or F fare bucket. Otherwise your ticket still shows, and you are travelling on, the paid-for Y or J fare bucket you bought originally, and those are the entitlements you will receive, plus a seat in the higher cabin on board.
As with (P) fares connecting to intra gulf flights, it is the fare basis you are travelling on that determines benefits and entitlements, not the cabin you may be sitting in. The fare basis is shown on the eticket, immediately to the right of the cabin class. The first letter of the fare basis indicates the fare bucket you are travelling on. So whilst the cabin class may say (U) after an upgrade, the fare basis will still be (O) or (Y) etc.
But just because you remain in the fare of the original booking, that itself does not have anything to do whether you should be able to access lounges or not. 90% of airlines keep you in the original booking class when upgrading. But they still give you lounge access. It is not a technical limitation or anything but a conscious decision by QR and on top of that I would argue a big middle finger to their frequent flyers (treatment of avios upgrades vs cash upgrades) and even just weird in general for them as a carrier who is 95%+ focused on transfer passengers who will be interested in spending their layovers in lounges and who generally present themselves as an "ultra-premium carrier".