hugolover

According to this credit card blog Star have binned the "requirement" to offer lounge access to third party lounge (hereafter 3PL) for *G. This only affects *G access but not business class. Understanding this, would mean ALL Star Alliance Gold's including the carriers own FFP members. Think, flying prime WK from a non-hub as SEN.

What are the chances of Mr Spohr and the other airlines following the advice in my many letters (customer feedback, you can blame me for any enhancements) and following suit with UA?

Now we all know that when you access a lounge using a *G issued by a non-operating *A member the *G issuer pays for the lounge (cough cough that might not be true) so I am even surprised the costs are so significant vs customer "loyalty".

I'm using a lot of 3PL's due to the routes I am flying. And indeed, here in Poland apart from WAW they're all 3PL. Pretty much every 3PL I've ever used is in Priority Pass but it is generally the case that guaranteed admission to the operating carriers pax is in the agreement, stopping you being turned away due to capacity. That would indeed be a pity to have to risk PP access all the time.

Another nail in the coffin for legacy carriers vs the LCC's...

A few weeks ago I took a FR flight from KRK-GLA, I paid for two seats with the extra as a comfort seat hence "Business Class" and it was quite tolerable in 2EF on the 737-800. Certainly the same bulkhead legroom as any mainline aircraft I've flown on in Europe. Lounge access was provided for at both ends with PP and are the same lounges used by LH. No HB check of any kind, unlike Helga's baggage excellence. I did not partake in the BOB offer as I had taken my cooler bag and filled it up in the lounge with goods as per FT BArb SOP.
And of course, it was cheap.

8420PR

Within Skyteam, Delta also restricts elite lounge access to contract lounges (when flying Delta), whereas Air France and KLM (and all other Skyteam members as far as I know) allow access (including to Delta elite members). I see United as more following Delta's lead. US customer expectations for lounges (or clubs as they seem to call them) are different, with no contract lounges in US and different access rules.

oliver2002

TAP and SAS have been doing this since years, there is/was no such *A requirement. Don't know what UA told VFTW, but its just another conjecture article.

malmostoso

I am pretty sure that until a few years ago the *A lounge policy was along the lines of "if an airline contracts a lounge for its J passengers, then *G in any class can access it". Admittedly I have no evidence to back this up.

chris63

That was also my impression

hugolover

Yes, I know about SK and TP, I’ve encountered the SK issue in KRK and used PP.

Given another carrier has fallen, UA, is it inevitable that LH Group will follow?

warakorn

I was under the impression that the operating carrier is paying the 3PL in the first place.
There might be an internal clearing system within Star Alliance. However, I doubt it that a 3PL in a small European airport will send invoices to South America, Asia, New Zealand etc.[QUOTE]

hugolover

Minor correction to the interpretation of SK & TP. SK binned all 3PL. This situation would be like SK was offering 3PL on cabin class but not on status. TP is the same. Are there any situations where TP BC get access but Gold don't?

UA have binned it for *G only, BC still get access.

fassy

Well, for most contract lounges the loss of access to them is not much of a loss anyway.

And in most of the airports which I used to have access I don’t want to spend more time than necessary anyway, like WRO.

in the beginning I was a bit annoyed but nowadays... it really doesn’t matter.

if the alternative would be to hike the prices and keep access, I rather have decent ticket prices than access to a subpar lounge.

hugolover

I guess you're not a beer drinker! WRO has Grimbergen, all three kinds . Even the SN lounges don't have that.

fassy

I’m German! ‘nough said?

But to be honest, never looked at the beers in the WRO lounge. Most of them time departing WRO means going home via CPH and a quite long drive. Swedish police has the nasty habit of doing alcohol testing at the border checkpoint... and even if a single beer probably won’t have any measurable effect, I rather not risk it.

yurtripper

The SK situation is slightly different from UA because they didn't just keep out *Gs from elsewhere but even their own SAS Plus pax if it was a contract lounge (SAS+ is technically PE, but considered C for ground services), so this wasn't discriminatory against *Gs in the way that UA's changes appeared (until *A updated their policy to mirror that of UA).

You can probably grab the original *A policy from Google cache or the blogs. The original wording - "you have access to these third party contract lounges," - has now been changed to "you may have access to these third party contract lounges".
https://www.staralliance.com/en/lounge-access-policy

That doesn't meant that *G(Y) pax can no longer enter contract lounges - it's still dependent on the policy of the airline that has the contract with the lounge and so far only UA is doing this. I'll admit that the direction of travel doesn't look encouraging though.

yurtripper

Mental note: make trip to WRO in the near future. Not really a beer drinker these days, but I can still make an exception for Grim.