Originally Posted by
hfly
All Star Alliance carriers use the TK lounge,
Yes *A partners too. Not just TK per my Reddit post.
Originally Posted by
hfly
As also mentioned above despite having turnstiles with scanner technology these do not work for anyone without being validated by an agent (except IGA pass holders). Meanwhile, if you are trying to use the lounge because of status, and heaven help you if it is alliance status, they do not seem to have much in terms of reference material, so if you are flying BA in Y, but are Emerald on any other Oneworld carrier, count on 5 minutes to sort that out, at least.
If you're a Y elite, shouldn't the check-in airline (BA in your example) give you an invite to the IGA lounge too?
I understand the difficulty when a airline passenger enters a contract lounge without an invite card. I did a SIN-KUL-SGN-HKG J redemption routing once (going home after
SIN DO 2023: 13 - 15 January 2023: USA Martin Luther King Jr Day Weekend, pricey cash fares that day, and I only had to be home for dinner). I rocked up to Rose Lounge in SGN and set off series of calls to check in to confirm they can charge for me to enter (I didn't foresee this - I could've just given them my Priority Pass and made their day easier).
Originally Posted by
hfly
Entering is ALWAYS a mess, with all sorts of paid people, whether Priority Pass, various Bank credit cards, whatever causing huge queue's at the entrance, and messing up the airline invitation lounge, general guarantee is that 3/4 of the people in the queues are in the wrong places, and everyone has a problem, not the right credit card, trying to get too many people in, not wanting to pay, etc. Worse the staff is inept, and will do things like double or triple charge Priority Pass when you are traveling with a guest AND flying Business Class, and they will even attempt such garbage when they have been warned beforehand by an airlines country/station manger not to do so, as the operate under the guise that they do not believe that anyone entering from their airlines will not be frequenting the lounge again/often. The only smooth entry is for IGA members, as they do all this to try and juice their IGA membership.
Originally Posted by
hfly
Then of course as mentioned before there are all the lounge program and credit card programs, which seem to be the priority for the IGA staff.
I wonder is that the cause of the delay? IGA just being painstaking about making sure they can charge credit card companies/Priority Pass/airlines before they let pax enter, and also, their systems being awfully slow?
But then again I found airport staff in Turkey to be "disengaged" in the most part. Besides entering/leaving IST with QR, we travelled domestically to ASR and DNZ on TK, my wife and I are both partner *G.
Check in - always tagged my bags under my wife no matter how much we try and tell them to tag separately - had we both suffered baggage delay, our HK travel insurer will use the one name bag tags to cap our claim. DNZ check in had to be reminded to put our priority tags on (perhaps he didn't because they didn't work ex-DNZ).
IGA IST domestic lounge (better food than the TK CIP lounge bagel) - we had to watch like hawks to make sure the IGA staff don't try and enter us as one principal and one guest (it was attempted).
(QR check in lady in IST was lovely though, so I won't condemn the whole country).