philipat

My pleasure. As above, your actual cost of clearing and checking-in again at CGK T2 would be USD10 for the Visa and IDR150K for PSC (About USD17). Then you have all the aggravation, especially at CGK.

A suggestion. If you are staying in SIN then staying in JB, you could put your check-in in a taxi with a note to the bell captain in your hotel to hold pending your arrival. Your SIN hotel would help make arrangements. I wouldn't recommend this in too many places in the world but in SIN you would be safe. The cost of this would probably be about the same and you would save all the hassle. Just a thought.

JayhawkCO

I thought about doing something like that, but it currently looks like I'll be taking off via bus right away for KL from JB. The fare from CGK-JHB + visa + departure tax + bus is still < CGK-KUL. Won't be the end of the world to spend an extra $17. Thanks for the thought though.

Chris

broadwayboy

For those who've been to Esplanade/Premier Lounge recently, is the internet speed still very slow at SQ's and ultra fast at Premier's?

broadwayboy

I am answering my own question since I had just spent few hours at Esplanade Lounge earlier this evening.

When I asked at the Check-In desk, the invitation only shows for Esplanade and I was told that this is the dedicated lounge for F/J/PPS pax. The others are for Y pax with elite status.

The lounge itself is perfectly adequate - I did see a door marked 'Shower' but did not enter. My biggest complaint is the internet connection, which is extremely unreliable. My Skype connection kept getting interrupted and browser kept dropping connection every few minutes.

BENLEE

I generally prefer the Premier Lounge, unless it is crowded. It's more spacious and more variety of food. It also have small workstation desk that I can do some useful work while waiting.

As for internet connection, no problem in either Premier or Esplande.

jmgriffin

Any updates on these lounges? I'm flying out of CGK on SQ in First soon, is it still possible for SQ First to choose any of the 3 lounges?

pjd012

Now - after checkin if traveling in C or F - you turn left and walk into the Lounge/Passport Control area. Private passport control - no line - and directly into the lounge - you can then walk through the lounge and across the hall to the Esplande (SQ) lounge. Saves at least 15 minutes of walking and lines - so after an unpredictable taxi ride to the airport - all is very smooth and easy.

smashingly

Hi guys, just came across this thread whilst sitting in an airport hotel near CGK trying to decide whether to check out now (11:30am) and head to CGK to shop and use the lounge facilities, or hang out at the hotel a bit longer. My dilemma - I'm flying SQ CGK-SIN-SYD then NZ SYD-WLG (economy on all 3 legs) - I have *A Gold (Aegean M&B) and normally in NZ (AKL or WLG) I can use the Air NZ Koru Lounge even if I'm not flying on a *A carrier (I proved this last time I used the WLG Koru whilst waiting for a Virgin Australia flight, and asked the fairly senior lady there if it was OK and she said it definitely was).

Anyway... the dilemma is because I just used the Star Alliance website's lounge finder, and it reckons that of the 5 lounges available to *G passengers, NONE of them are available to Y class pax. They all show as "contracted" lounges for First/Business only. ...?! Surely if I'm flying SQ, a *A carrier, and I have *G, that's normally enough to get into a lounge?

Anyone shed light on this? From reading this whole thread it seemed it wouldn't be an issue, but looking at the Star Alliance website's lounge-finder, tells a different story. Anyone with *A Gold got recent experience of accessing *A lounges on a Y-class ticket? <confused> I don't really want to head to the airport 5 hours before my flight hoping to chill out, eat, surf the internet etc only to find that I can't get into any of the lounges (without paying, presumably)...?

Any info much appreciated!

gilbertaue

You will have access. Just not the SQ lounge... I don't know which one it is, but you will have access. Talking from experience flying Y and on *G TK from CGK-SIN

smashingly

Ok so just to follow up with my post, when I checked in at the SQ biz class counter, they printed "Invited to the Pura Indah Lounge" on my boarding pass. Ditton on the SIN-SYD boarding pass ("Invited to the Krisflyer Gold Lounge") ...

So it's all good. When I got to Pura Indah they waved me in through the First Class (rather than Business Class) door and I'm now the one customer sitting in the First Class lounge. The internet is pretty terrible, I can't even get speedtest.net to load, let alone run a speed test. Connecting to a personal VPN improved things slightly - I use this trick a lot with public wifi, usually the router isn't up to the task of handling the thousands of simultaneous connections created by the hundreds of people using it - or more likely, the one or two people abusing it with bittorrent downloads. To make matters worse, usually everyone's hitting "Reload" and adding to the workload of the router. A VPN eliminates this issue, the VPN tunnel only uses one connection on the router - that's all the router sees, one encrypted connection - within which is tunneled all of your traffic. It's also just sensible practise to use a VPN when you're using unknown networks.

Speed test result just came in: 0.32Mbps download, 0.17Mbps upload. I'm tempted to go see if the Premier lounge will let me in, but I've had such a stressful time transiting through Indonesia in the last few days that I honestly can't be bothered moving from my chair now Shame my transit thru Changi is only 65 minutes, I won't get to use the lounge there, ditto I think with Sydney... such is life when your employers book your flights the night before

Kiwi Flyer

That is an exception to the rule. NZ has a special arrangement with VA. *A does not have access to koru club when flying other non-*A airlines.

smashingly

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought that might be the case, even though the lady said that it didn't matter what airline I was on. I'm still going to try and test this out whenever I get the chance though, just out of curiosity - but I've had other *A carriers (i.e. Lufthansa @ JFK, IIRC) refuse me entry to their lounge because my boarding pass was a non-*A airline. Fair enough too - why should they give me free food/wifi/booze/showers if I'm not flying on their airline/alliance?

While I'm on the topic (vaguely), I've noticed on Air NZ long-haul flights that sometimes the purser or senior stew or whoever he is, comes out and personally greets a passenger and does the whole "if there's anything at all I can do, let me know, here have some nice headphones" thing... and it's usually a passenger who priority-boarded at the same time as me and therefore I assume they're also *G, but like me they are sitting in Economy. And I always wonder "hmm. why didn't I get the same treatment?" I'm assuming that what's going on here is that the pax in question is an Air NZ Airpoints Gold member, and that this courtesy does not get extended to other-airline *A Gold members - I find that weird, to be honest, it's like a sub-tier within a tier, like after all that hard work (money?) attaining status, you find that actually your gold status isn't fully 'gold'. But it only bugs me when I'm travel-weary, irritable and craving a bit of *G TLC to cheer me up I should just suck it up and pay for business-class, or see if I can beg Air NZ to switch my status over to their Airpoints program (from Aegean? fat chance...) But I'm probably a bit naive and new to the status thing, and it's still very novel to me. Flyertalk has been invaluable to educate me on how it works.

Sorry for the drift off topic... I'm curious tho.

chavala

I'm a UA 1K/*G with a paid United Club Card flying JKT-BKK in Biz class. To my surprise the *A Lounge Finder says I have no access to any of the lounges. But after reading this thread, it seems as if I do. Can anyone tell me what my choices are?

BON

You'll have access to the Business class side of the Esplanade Lounge. There's also Premier lounge and Pura Indah but they're usually for *G's flying Y. The Esplanade lounge is only for SQ's Business class, First Class and PPS passengers.

chavala

Thanks!