Originally Posted by
kluau88
My experience during the last two weeks.
Just returned from SYD this morning where there are a few *A lounge options (SQ, NZ, UA). After going to the RCC to re-checkin the agent in the RCC, who claimed to have helped me before, she invited myself and 2 traveling partners into the F lounge. We declined the invitation from the agent at the RCC and went upstairs to the SQ lounge. Upon presenting our 2 UA F BP's we were informed that the UA lounge is downstairs. I said I knew the lounge is downstairs but preferred to use this one per the *A benefits. As she was jotting down some information I asked her how things were going. She commented that the lounge has been busy with a lot of UA passengers and that we really should tell UA to fix their lounge. She also commented their lounge is small which I said yes it's small and how with the A380 they only have room for their passengers. Should be noted that if you arrive in the morning on UA 863 ex-SFO- or UA 839 ex-LAX and have onward travel you will probably be declined entry into the SQ lounge due to the arrival/departure of SQ 221/220.
I would have totally understood if a WhaleJet was parked right there, but this was 2:30pm, and the C lounge was a ghost town (I imagine that the F lounge was similar).
Kiwi - I had only mentioned Star Gold because the matron had erroneously claimed that only PPS, SQ biz and SQ F had lounge access, despite the "Star Alliance Gold" in giant *A font slapped on the door and sign outside. You might be right in that it confused the situation a little, but it was already a bad situation in that I had to break out the printout. Funny she made no mention of KF Gold.
I wonder if SQ has specifically instructed the matrons to not allow UA passengers into the lounge. Maybe they don't get reinbursed sufficiently by UA? Or maybe its part of SQ's current march towards exclusivity (no awards in New C, New F, PPS changes, etc).