Poor LHR T3 lounge experience
 

My wife, 79 yo father and I were travelling together yesterday on TG to BKK. It was a treat in F on the way down to Oz. My father has only ever travelled long-haul once before.

My wife who is also WP arrived at LHR T3 with my father earlier and having seen the SAS lounge was very busy decided she would try the 'anytime access' in the QF lounge (which meant the terrace lounge). She is not well versed in lounge rules but nevertheless she and my father were accessed into the F lounge.

I also thought (mistakenly) that I could get access but was refused. I questioned this and they were a little gruff. The supervisor checked and came out and said no access but my wife and father could stay in but I could not. I suggested they might not want to stay and left it at that. My wife who was standing out of sight heard the lounge lady say "he didn't have to question it like that" to which her colleague said "I'd have thrown them all out". My wife heard this and feeling embarrassed collected my father and assumed that it was the fact they were in the F lounge that was incorrect. She walked my father out of the F lounge and over the way to the J lounge, where she was refused access.

I then (belatedly) checked the rules on a SAS lounge PC and they indicated that J lounge anytime access is available for WP, so she should have been allowed in.

My view - bearing in mind the honest error, they would have done best to let me into the F lounge. Everyone happy. Second best, suggest we all go to the J lounge. Third best, what they did, which embarrassed everyone. They were certainly not discrete when refusing access.

My question is does the anytime access apply to the BA T3 terrace J lounge?

Cheers,

Marcus.

LHR T3 is a BA lounge, so anytime access is not available. Anytime access is only for QF lounges.

and joint QF/BA or AA/QF lounges (for example BKK and LAX) :)

Ah, now I see. Thanks.

I've only tried to use this benefit once before and this was at SIN, where all was OK as it must be a joint lounge.

The fact that it was not a joint lounge caught us out.

IMHO however - the snipes from the staff and refusing my wife / father access into the J lounge after letting them into F was v poor indeed.

How did the SAS lounge compare -- better or worse?

QF does have some special lounge access rules at LHR due to the JSA with BA, giving more access than normal (per OW rules). However it does not include anytime access so the staff were kind in allowing access to the F lounge with a guest; perhaps they deserve accolades for doing that, rather than your ire for the J lounge dragons following the rules. Your real gripe is with TG for not providing their F pax with the lounge that you desire :)

SIN is a QF lounge (jointly with BA); not sure if the present BKK lounge is too, but the old airport lounge was also QF (which means WP access). Otherwise LAX is the other noteworthy QF lounge location where you might not expect it (labeled as AA in T4 and Oneworld in TBIT). Sadly other lounges such as HNL have been closed, no longer being a QF lounge.

Not too bad to be fair. I've been in the Terraces before, I'd say F was better. The SAS lounge was good, friendly, but busy. J/F all together.

True, TG should arrange a better lounge, no doubt. But I felt that I was treated a little disrespectfully by BA, rightly or wrongly. We made a mistake, so did they, then they became officious and embarrassed me, my wife and my father. If they had let me in, I would have loved them and felt even more loyalty towards BA/OW!!

Feeling even more loyalty towards BA/OW than you show by flying F on TG would not require much effort on your part, I humbly suggest...

TG may get a better lounge when all Star Alliance airlines relocated to the new T2 after 2012/2013...

BA T3 lounge is BA lounge. Not BA/QF JV lounge. Otherwise the QANTAS logo would be together with the BA logo on the wall without Terrace signature.

I have sufficient self-funded travel to have earned QF WP, much of it with BA. In any case I will continue to choose who I fly with based upon what I get out of it.

Fair play. My mistake in this case which I fully accept responsibility for. Bad taste in mouth though.

Just to be clear, the LHR T3 lounges are Galleries lounges. Terraces lounges are the old-style lounges gradually being refurbished into the Galleries concept.

BA lounges operate as status and not as a service. My own experience traveling with my elderly father illustrates it perfectly. We were in Concorde Room in T4 (few years back), flying F on BA. He is in 80s and walks with a cane, asks the lounge attendant for a buggy to the gate (which is far away, other end of T4). They reply "You don't really need that, you can walk to the gate" when he has trouble walking to the desk in the lounge. They don't know he is traveling with me; I walk up (fit young man who has no need for the buggy), and they immediately say "we'll order the buggy right away sir" (those days took me through the Concorde Room several times a month so most of the staff knew me by sight). I, having no need of the service, was deemed worthy of it (due to frequent flights in F on BA), while my father who needed it, and had a BA F ticket but had never been in the lounge before, was deemed not worthy.

An absurd system, and why BA is the way it is (perhaps why the UK is the way it is). So be happy, the BA LHR lounges will forever be this way.

Noted, thanks.

Sounds like you had a bad experience too. Having lived in the UK for most of my life, I found that most people typically respect age and the foibles it brings, actually that is quite constant worldwide. I think that is why I was so shocked by the attitude of the BA lounge staff frankly (who I felt were doing their job by the book, if not in spirit).

Crikey. On my reading of your post, none of you should have got in at all. You were flying with TG and had no BA status.

Airport Lounges are not a benevolent home for waifs and strays (or people who find the airline lounge to which they have access is not to their taste).

If I rocked up at the QF Lounge in Sydney flying Emirates and waving my BA Gold Card I'd expect, quite rightly, to be told that I could not come in.