sxc

Also the carpet is high-ish pile encouraging debris to get stuck in it.

serfty

Note that Qantas choose to have a midday opening.


Virgin Australia domestic lounges serve alcohol from 11am.


Also, this sadly is normal for Qantas this time of year. They close one of the adjoining lounges due to it being off peak business travel season.

sxc

Good to see that QF wants to give people a consistent experience year around ;-)

Having said that, I have been in the SYD J lounge post 10 am, and it's been pretty empty. I actually wonder if traffic in the lounges increases given people are travelling for Christmas, and they are travelling with their families.

Austman

QF used to close the Business lounges over the holiday period.

That got a lot of complaints.

So now they tend to close the Qantas Club lounges instead. So you then get a lot of families and holidaymakers in the Business lounges.

Lots of children (and adults) at breakfast where many of the options are pastries, breads and toast = lots of mess on the floor!

The lounge carpets always needed a lot of sweeping but during the holiday period they need more!

moa999

Not sure if the lounges are closed because of demand (unlikely as you have a lot more families travelling - and Qantas is very generous here - a lounge member or elite can bring the partner + 2kids)
or for what they call a deep clean. I believe this week in SYD the J lounge is closed and everyone directed to the Qantas Club (or Pub)

Sadly over the holiday period kids equals mess and you obviously came at the wrong time.
and while dark carpet hides coffee and wine spills, it shows food mess.
Agree though they do need to be more attentive with the vacuuming, they are generally fairly good with crockery collection.

You didn't really review the food, apart from commenting on the carrots, which as above generally go into a fairly noisy commercial juicer., But in general the Qantas food is way better than what you get in an American lounge.

As for the alcohol i think it's more a cost save thing. It's generally been 12 (though as mentioned above at one point was 2). But along with good coffee, the average Aussie likes a drink.
Take a trip to Perth one day and see the FIFO workers in the lounge.

pbl22

TheBOSman

The lounge is definitely far dirtier than normal in your pictures, though I've used the SYD domestic J lounge at a similar time of year and it has never been the cleanest lounge I've stepped into. The lounge is just slammed at one of its busiest times of year. However, it shouldn't be THAT bad as you saw there, never seen it that bad. It definitely could use a refresh or refurbish in a lot of areas, and I haven't been in it in a couple of years.

Disclaimer: I've been in all of QF's domestic business lounges and several of the QPs across the system.

HBA is probably in the top half of Qantas destinations in terms of traffic that have a Qantas Club believe it or not. HBA is noticeably larger than the operation at Launceston and that has a lounge. It is also noticeably larger than Alice Springs, which has a Club as well. Heck, Devonport, on Tassie, has probably 1/10th the passengers of HBA and IT has a Club too!

https://www.qantas.com/travel/airlin...egory=qcLounge

Entitled? Whiny? SFO777? Never

Austman

The clean floor issues in the Qantas lounges have been mentioned on sites like FT and AFF for many years. Sometimes with a lot of criticism of how grubby the lounge guests must be. One problem is the typical small tables and easy chairs layout - which is nice to relax in but hard to eat tidily. I've tried it a few times with toast - pastries etc. You have to be vigilant!

I've also seen manual sweepers brought out and they work pretty well and are silent.

An issue seems to be that they are not brought out often enough at peak mess times!

TPJ

I do like OP's Trip Reports - these are good reads. But I start to think, if there is any airline OP even remotely likes

The Australian reality is that there are 2 full service airlines: QF and VA. VA has only generic lounges for members, tiered FF's a and J passengers. While QF (outside of the holiday season) has a dedicated lounges for OWE and J passengers. I also think food-wise QF lounges are better. And yes - both QF and VA lounges can be crowded with staff not coping with cleaning.

mikalee

Are they closed because numbers are lower and it is pure cost savings or as numbers a lower the use the time to close them and do maintenance and maybe a deep clean?

shillard

To be fair, cleanliness (or lack thereof) in QF lounges is a disgrace.

The T1 J lounge is filthy 100% of the time.

Platy

Some questions:

1) is QF actually closing lounges in the holiday period to save cash
2) in the course of directing QC folk to the Business lounge is QF either (a) maintaining the business lounge quality of lounge offerings or (b) offering there usual fare for QC
3) does QF staff the lounge to accommodate the increased numbers of customers or maintain the same staffing levels (to save cash) resulting in staff being unable to keep up with the mess

To note that bar opening times are to some extent at the discretion of the airline (although ultimately bound by licensing). IIRC QF itself has changed the opening times (from noon to 1pm then back to noon, etc).

Most seating is low level with coffee table style furniture - eating hunched over is bound to result in debris, especially of breakfast items such as toast, croissants whatever bakery gets served, crackers, etc. In any case, it's a fact of life that in any bar, restaurant, cafe that food scraps inevitably get dropped: I can't remember the last time I saw a diner who felt the need to crawl around the floor trying to pick up their crumbs.

The photos show that the lounge was in an absolutely disgraceful state. I've seen the MEL business lounge in a similar state during breakfast hours.

QF should keep the lounge clean. If that is the state of the pace in viewable areas, how could you trust the hygiene standards in any part of the operation.

I would imagine that the NSW Food Authority would take a dim view of such conditions.

An abject failure by QF management.

lokijuh

Once upon a time (>10 years ago now?) the bars didn't open until 2pm (or was it 3pm?) , until VA upped the ante. I can't find exact opening time, but this from web archive, published July 2007:

serfty

In the 90's it was generally 3pm (both QF and AN) - Some places such as ASP and PER had midday.

At one stage the Domestic J lounges served it from Noon while for the QP it was still 3pm.

Also, for a few years, BNE opened the bar at 2pm when daylight saving was in operation in SYD/MEL.

VA's lounge's have always been from 11am.

Dave Noble

I do seem to recall that the binmge drinkers needed to wait until 3pm in some locations