SFO lounge access
 

Happy New Year! My wife and I are flying to Australia at the end of March. I am AA Platinum and OneWorld Sapphire. We have booked award tickets flying in 1st class from CLT to SFO on AA and business class from SFO to SYD on Qantas. We have a 3+ hour layover. I am a little confused about lounge access at SFO. Will we have to use the KLM/Air France lounge or will we have options?

https://www.oneworld.com/ffp/lounge-access has details of all the OW lounges at SFO

You can use any OW lounge that is open and accessible , plus whatever lounge QF offers to 1st class passengers ( if that is different )

None of the SFO lounges are great so it doesn't matter which lounge you get to use; the JL and CX lounges are often at capacity so refuse admission for QF pax and the BA lounge is unlikely to be open depending on your time of year for flight time. You could visit the AC before going over to the international terminal.
LAX has a much better QF lounge, fwiw.

Thanks for the responses!

Not sure how the OP gets access to any First class lounges. They are flying business class and OWS. This would restrict access to business class lounges.

For some reason I misread that the passenger was travelling in 1st class; indeed , it is whatever business class lounge that QF offers on top of the OW ones listed for SFO

Note there are quite a few reports on AustralianFrequentFlyer that the CX lounge agents generally try to deny access to Qantas passengers with lounge access rights.

technically QF pax are supposed to use the AF lounge, but i've gotten lucky and used the CX lounge with my OWE status.

of the lounges available to use, the CX lounge is the biggest and best imo.

As others have said, the lounge situation at SFO is rather dire... I'm sorry that you have to spend three hours in any of the lounges, IMHO this airport is crying out for a single Oneworld lounge like LAX.

Anyway, that said: if you're arriving into SFO three hours prior to QF74 then you should have a shot at getting into the CX lounge, which is easily the best of the bunch. CX has tight limits on how many QF passengers it will allow it, due to concerns of over-crowding in the lead-up to its SFO-HKG flights, but this should be your first port of call.

If CX denies you access, well, not much to be done but head for the Air France/KLM lounge which Qantas uses, or just browse the terminal and see if there's not some public cafe or such that appeals more.

It used to be much worse, so this is probably as good as it will ever get. BA built a new lounge a decade ago (but skimped on it), and CX used to be in a closet outside of security (holding maybe 30 pax for their lounge). Sadly QF quit serving SFO about the time of the BA lounge rebuild (maybe pulling their money from that project) and CX was rejected by BA from sharing their lounge (not very logical as the flight timings were separate making it ideal for sharing). So I have no hope of Oneworld ever doing anything better at SFO, this is as good as it will ever get. I suppose compared to YVR it is pretty good, and roughly on par with JFK.

Note that SFO has excellent non-lounge facilities, with some quite good restaurants and bars, much nicer than the lounges (and better than LAX has, fwiw).

I will be traveling in business on QF 74 to SYD and have a long layover. I don't have OW status. Which lounge can I access that has a shower? I've been reading the CX lounge is not open to QF passengers and the BA lounge is closed way before departure. Are my only options going to the AA lounge or the Centurion Lounge? Which one is preferable?

As you do not have OW status lounge access will be based on class of travel on QF74 SFO SYD
http://www.qantas.com/travel/airline...isco/global/en
Lounges tab.
Flights tab

Really?

Yes. But the AF -KLM lounge doesn't have a shower...

Then you may have to pay cash for access to another lounge.
QF will only give you access to a lounge based on class of travel.