Lounge access in India
 

I am *Gold and RCC member. I will be traveling regularly thru Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai flying SFO->SIN and SIN->SFO on UA. All flights into and inside India will be on Jet Airways or other domestic airlines.

Can I have access to Lufhansa's contract lounges in these cities? Do you FF's to India have any advice as to lounge access?

Thanks
Jim

Your *G status, I'd think, is key to gaining access over being a RCC member.

In DEL atleast the lounge is NOT a LH lounge, it is a 3rd party lounge(as you stated). You need an invitation from the check-in counter to even enter. I don't think you are entitled to access as the *G rules do not apply to non-star alliance lounges. I would be surprised if you were, as the lounge serves many different airlines and is already full to the brim...

I believe that *Gold access requires that you be traveling on a same day, *Alliance ticket in order to gain access. For that matter, it looks like even RCC membership requires that you be traveling on a *A ticket:

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,3113,00.html

Correct, you will have access to these lounges if you fly on LH, OS, TG, SQ, or BD (though I guess BD is on hiatus from BOM right now...) but not when you fly 9W.

If you are flying Business on Jet or others, they also have contracts with the contracted lounge in each location--including domestically. Through April in many of the places a Platinum or Gold Mastercard will get you into the Clipper Lounges in BOM and DEL (I'm not sure about Hyderabad).

I have no personal experience with this, but the Lufthansa website has a lounge search feature. You can specify the city and the card/ticket that you'll be using. One of the options is "Star Gold Card". When you search for Star Gold Card and Delhi or Hyderabad, it returns the contract lounges.

Probably isn't going to help me, though, when going to HYD next month as it seems unlikely that I'll have my 1P card by then (assuming fast-track challenge works for me).

This has been my experience also. This week I was refused entry to the BMI lounge at LHR T1 because even though I came into LHR on United I was leaving LHR on Finnair and I was told that the *A rules say I must be leaving on a *A carrier no matter what my *A status is, what carrier I arrived with or if I have an RCC card.

The LH website shows that *G card access is allowed based on flying LH (or another *A airline) from India, not 9W.

This is the correct interpretation of the *A rules.

1W status would have given you access to a lounge, as FI is a 1W member.

No new relationship with Jet Airways?
 

Thank you for the info.
Jet Airways (9W) and UA announced codeshare in Apr 2005, but nothing seems to have happened other than shared checkin counter in Europe somewhere.
Would sure like UA to partner with someone in India, 9W or even Kingfisher. Air Sahara is evidently taken by American.

Lounge access in India
 

What do you think are my chances of getting into a lounge at DEL, now that Air India joined Star Alliance? I realize that the joining won't be complete for a while, and I'll be there mid-January. Has anyone tried yet?

Since it'll be a while before they're initiated, I highly doubt you'll get into the lounge.

Any chance you can get into the LH contract lounges?

Not sure about DEL, but LH in HYD recently .gave me a pass to the contract lounge when I showed my *G card upon checkin. And I was even able to guest a non *G co-worker into the lounge. I have never been in a domestic RCC (other than SFO Intl), but I think they'd all compare favorably to the contract lounge in HYD :) But then, anything's better than sitting in the boarding area in HYD for 2 hrs.