ollieinmelbourne

I know QF is far, far, better than North American & many other carriers, but surely it's time to improve the quality & quantity of food in the lounge? Dim sims, party pasties, third grade Silverside & ham??? YUK. Has it always been this bad?? I mean, people pay for membership, can QF not afford to provide better than they do without making the provision completely uneconomic? From the number of people using the lounges, they must sell plenty of memberships?! Sometimes I've been too busy to grab something before travelling. However, the food served is generally poor or the serving platters empty. Ok if your company pays for J class I suppose, but if they don't...

In economy class the food isn't much better than the lounge. In fact it's worse! So much for the QF City flyer ads saying "at least I'll get dinner". Have they seen what is served??? The cooks must have very little money to play with. A half-decent sandwich would be preferable & probably cheaper to provide than the chicken thigh I've been served up cooked in a variety of sausces over the last 2 or 3 years or so.

Before the chicken thighs cooked a hundred diffrent ways, we had even worse though, 2 grissini & a teaspoon of dip. May be QF are reducing costs & eventually planning to get rid of the food all together, making people pay a la DJ, & as most North American airlines?

At least you can always get a drink in the QF Pub though^

Traveloguy

Whilst I agree that some of the offerings are pretty poor, compared to BA (just an example as they are the airline I most often fly these days), the food in the QC's are definitely better - BA lounges often push packets of crips and twiglets rather than any real food. That said, I don't think Dixson would need to do much in order to vastly improve the offering.

Looking forward to when they create a WP lounge as at least it might solve some of the capacity issues by separating people off into a new lounge. That's said, I hope they don't make the current QC's any smaller as they really do need all the space that they currently have.

ANstar

Compared to other airline lounges I think the food is pretty decent.

I know it will never happen, but I would love QF to get rid of paid for QC memberhsip so we could have some room to move.

Skystar

I think the meals in Y are reasonable, snacks are a bit lightweight though. I've had no problem with the dinners served - haven't had the chicken thigh you speak of.

Gladly take the hot meals over a mere sandwich Bear in mind there aren't that many domestic flights in other developed parts of the world with actual meals on hour long hops.

RickyT

All in all, I find the meals or snacks in Y are reasonable (at least we are fed on an hour long domestic flight!) but I guess their quantity could be improved though.


[quote=ollieinmelbourne]So much for the QF City flyer ads saying "at least I'll get dinner". Have they seen what is served??? The cooks must have very little money to play with. A half-decent sandwich would be preferable & probably cheaper to provide than the chicken thigh I've been served up cooked in a variety of sausces over the last 2 or 3 years or so.

Ahh...the good old chicken. Over the last month, I had the same chicken meal for the dinner flights (Lemon Chicken with rice and veg). Previously, I once had beef stew on the BNE-MEL flight which was half decent. Moreso, I remember the TimTam bsicuit that accompanied the meal, it was muhc better than the tiny Cadbuy mint-filled chocolate that we are receiving nowadays.

Apparently, from another report, QF has introduced hot brekky on its SYD-BNE service. ^ Hopefully this will be expanded network wide pretty soon.

Aus_Mal

In the lounge, my belief is that the food is ok. Neither bad, nor great. Qantas could improve!.

For flights it's a different matter. The snacks are ok, except for certain flights (eg MEL-BNE 5:05pm-7:10pm. Snack only).

Surely that deserves a meal?

serfty

As a 13 year QP member I can say the food and wine in the 90's was much better than it is today.

Then again, after AN went belly up, for about 30 months the QP catering was much worse. Hot food? Ha! Reasonable Wines? nup!

Around 2003 the catering improved to the current levels and has remained basically static since, with perhaps the cheeses improving a bit and a change to the hot food varieties about a year ago.

drewbles

As a paying QP member I disagree. Judging from the amount of SG and WP tags in the lounges (when I travel at least) it's clear the majority are not paid members rather earned through the FF program.

That said, I travel a *lot* more than the average person and I can never quite crack SG. I was 60 SC's short this year and simply didn't have the time to do a SC run. I do probably 90% of my miles in O/N class on MEL/SYD routes. When it's self funded, it's not cheap. Getting 700 SC's that way works out to be fscking expensive.

Split them up if you will but leave the current standard at least for paying members. I still miss the days where segments counted as well as SC's. Oh well

justin_krusty

while the BA outstations are rather poor, the LHR offerings are IMO better than QF domestic. there is always a selection of cheese, meat, salad and soup. in T4 there is hot food all day. and if those things have run out (which seems to be quite regular in the QP at times) then you can fallback on the chips and biscuits. when the QP is empty then you dont have much... PER domestic didnt even have bread to toast the other day.

i am talking about the international BA lounges tho, which are for long haul as well as short haul (prob most similar to aust domestic ops tho), but it goes to show that a small effort would make a big difference:
- keep platters topped up
- small improvement to range
- nibblies like crisps/biscuits in addition.

serfty

I'm not sure if that is completely true. My considerable experiences with the major Qantas domestic QP's are generally as follows:

• Continental Breakfast available until 10-11am.
• Cheese, meat, salad available from around 10am.
• Hot Soup available from Midday until 5-6pm
• Hot foods such as "Party Pies", mini pizza's from around 4:30pm until 7pm
• Biscuits, Cakes and fresh fruit are available all day
• Juice, water and expresso coffee available throughout day
• I have rarely (if ever) seen 'crisps' in QP's.

True, I am not in PER that much, but if something like bread to toast runs out it is generally quite a simple thing to find a staff member and ask for more.

And, yes, the LHR BA do cater for international travellers whereas the domestic QP's do not (aside from one or two ex ADL flights).

Interestingly, I find the BNE/SYD/MEL International J lounges to be inferior in their catering than their Domestic cousins.

og

The only way BA lounges (in LON) are better better than QPs in Oz is through the provision of sandwiches. These are a far more practical way of feeding the masses and filling the gaps between the ocean of wine / beer that one has to consume to get value for money / value for SG or WP status.

C'mon QF, make some sangers available in the QPs. Forget the silverside!

James S

Make your own you lazy bugger! That's what the cold meat cuts, cheese and bread are for. :-)

icarius

biscuits and cakes were not present at 5.30am on 25 may 2007 at QP.Offering for breakie in domestic lounge has been cereals, toast and fruit, juices and coffee/tea. I have noticed that improvement to the breakkie onboard QF flights. Now its a hot muffin compared to cereal bowl so someone influential must have complained to qantas management.I have been fortunate enough to experience QF INTL F lounge in MEL thanks to a fellow Fter and like the decor which was white and gave the feeling of clean.

Blackcloud

Over here the QP NZ Domestic are much better than in OZ. Besides the fact that there are fewer people in them, drinks are always self serve, food platters are always topped up but the offerings appear to be the same.
International QP though are like the Australian ones very limited offerings with more people using them, although not standing room only. I was amazed at how big WLG international lounge was until it began to fill up, only 2 international flights at a time. It felt like over half the passengers were in there!
NZ KC though are just superior, often 23 different varieties of beer with plenty of food offerings.

serfty

I did mention 'generally'; perhaps it was a one-off or maybe these come out mid-morning. Did you look near the coffee machines for the Biscuits?