Originally Posted by
VE105
Tell Qatar and Qantas first.
Also, CX and QR have the best lounges among OW and QR has already limited access to Emerald, which means for CX regular like myself who mostly travel to ports either have CX lounges or have no decent OW lounges whatsoever, the benefits of quieter and emptier CX F lounges due to blocking of partner elites access could outweigh the inconvenience of not being able to visit some partner airlines lounges.
To be honest, the only partner lounges worth visiting for CX DM are QR (limited access to J/F pax), JL NRT/HND (I'm happy to spend one more hour in Tokyo in exchange for its mediocre sushi and very salty curry rice) and QF SIN(very troublesome to visit and already blocked CX DM access during most of the time in most of the week)/MEL/SYD. So how many CX DM fly to MEL/SYD frequently? While there is huge number of transit QF elites through HKG, not to mention the (also) large amount of AA/BA/JL elites, or coming up even MH/AS etc. due to their easiness of getting Emerald compare to CX FFP.
CX has a large "lounge surplus" over other airlines, which maybe good for the airline, but not good for its loyal frequent flyers that pay huge sum to gain/maintain our DM status~
I completely agree with your sentiments. I don't know how many SYD\MEL based DMs CX has but I'm one of what I guess to be a relatively small number of longtime MEL based DMs. I'm aware of a handful maybe who are FT regulars and there's usually not more than a few DMs on most HKG-MEL sectors IME.
Certainly the QF crowd are well represented in the CX lounges both in HKG and elsewhere. This can frustrate sometimes (MNL stands out in particular given the timing of the evening QF departure) given the relative difficulty of maintaining DM and QF does not exactly return the favour in many ways. I would however add the MEL QF F Lounge as one of the few on the OW circuit as worth visiting (access to which I am grateful to QF for). It is a smaller version of QF F lounge in SYD which can often feel crowded and a bit too much like a food court operation. MEL on the other hand often not as busy. I wasn't aware of QF's policy in SIN and as you say how many DMs can there be on those flights?
All in all I think appropriate and welcome if CX allocates some dedicated real estate to DMs at least in HKG/major out ports. OWEs will still benefit from the best lounge offerings anywhere IMO.