Lounge Access
 

Air Canada's Employee Communications has some internal memos on shared lounge access but they have not made these public. It is in their CIC 108, page 36.

Hopefully, this means there will be some reciprocity when travelling on protected flights when they have cancelled CP or AC's flight.

They also noted that they would only protect the lowest fare class! (BYE BYE UPGRADES?)

CP employees have made lounge access details public elsewhere, so I'm just repeating: reciprocal lounge access effective February 1. It appears that E/P, S/E, Elite and Gold members can use any CP or AC lounge.

That's encouraging. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Does that mean that CP Gold and EP can use the AC lounges for both arrival and departure??? Presently, CP flyers can only use the lounge before a flight departs.

I've regularly used CP lounges upon arrival, both as a Gold and E/P. The agents seem to be pretty easy going about it.

'Course, I don't usually have much need of it, other than a quick bathroom trip before the baggage carousel, or a quick phone call, drink (O.J.) or snack.

I just talked to both Aeroplan and CPlus and they both confirmed that effective immediately all Aeroplan Elite and S.Elite members have access to Canadian Empress Lounges when holding a Canadian boarding pass, and all Canadian Gold and Exec Plat have access to Maple Leaf lounges when holding an Air Canada boarding pass. For the moment you can only use the lounge corresponding to your boarding pass (presumably excepting S.Elite).

Both staff were helpful, took some time to check and both commented that 'things are changing every day at the moment'.

I will try to use my CP Gold card tomorrow in the Ottawa Maple Leaf lounge and report what happens.....

BTW, do people mind if 'integration' news gets posted to both the AC and CP forums? I know it increases traffic, but I can't think how else to do it.

I suspect that we (i.e. Canadian-based "Ftalkers") all read both the AC and Cdn postings, so while I have in the recent past posted some things on both, I will bite the bullet and only add to one or the other site, depending upon the item's direct relevance to the respective carrier.

Ken, with respect to access to Empress Lounges after flights, as a Gold, this past year some lounges have enforced the pre-flight only entry rule (particularly Calgary where both lounges ar rather small). Toronto and Vancouver are more liberal in this regard since all J-class passengers (in addition to Gold and ExexPlatinum) have lounge access for domestic or international travel. Of course, these lounges are the largest in the system.

While I have always had entry to AC's lounges as either an Elite (in years where I had enough travel with AC) or through the Maple Leaf enRoute card (now special Diners), it is nice to see this issue of reciprocality handled quickly and logically.