Originally Posted by
bensyd
How do these battlers get into any lounge to begin with??? From what I understand of charter flights (and they are pretty rare in Oz) they are rock bottom priced which I would assume means they aint giving them lounge access, but they all turn up with "VIP Certificates". I can only imagine they pay a premium to the charter company when booking to have lounge access
Are the savings worth it? Because from reading the BA Board I certainly wont be hopping on a charter flight anytime soon.
A lot of "providers" (i.e. tour operators, the airport websites themselves, car parking websites etc etc) all sell lounge access as they get a %age commission on the sale.
More recently there was an offer via the egg credit card (part of Prudential) where they were offering a 75% cashback on lounge access so it was literally the same price as buying a pint in the airport bar.
I think it's a case of people who would always fly charter trading up to the lounge, not BA flyers trading down to the charter flight then buying lounge access ontop if that makes sense.
Interestingly I was talking to a client of mine (an infrequent flier) a while back and he said that when he went on his honeymoon they paid for lounge access and he thought it was pretty crap - he would rather have been in the main bit of the airport where you can do "shopping and stuff".