I was thinking about whether I was immoral to visit 3 Star Alliance lounges before boarding UA flight while I was in Hong Kong. After checking in, I first went to SQ Silver Kris lounge for food (best food among *A lounges in Hong Kong), then went to TG Royal Orchard lounge for more food and magazine, finally I went to United Club lounge to wait for boarding announcement. Were I being immoral since UA needed to pay for 2 more Airlines for my lounge access?

Nothing wrong with it, you are authorized a guest. That guest can be your best friend of many years, or someone you just met...that's your call.

Agreed.

And I don't care if your new friend slips you some cash for a cocktail down the road.

see Matthew 7:1.

It is not a loophole. Period, end of discussion.

An example of a loophole would be guesting multiple people into various clubs in different terminals within minutes of each other because you know they are contract lounges where the attendant is just doing manual checks of boarding passes or other credentials. That's clearly *not* the intent of the one-guest limit, but you're exploiting a system where Lounge B doesn't realize you were just in Lounge A with a guest.

Huh? :confused: Lounge entrants typically *do* show a passport along with the BP or other credential. (I'm thinking the Star Gold entrant here...a local lounge member who knows the agent well may not have to do this.) How does that establish any type of relationship between my guest and I?

Also in the same lounge, like this?

I tried once to guest someone in. I was at United Club lounge and the guy in front of me was being given a hard time. (don't know what about) I walked up, and offered to guest him in. The agent denied the request, said they were too full.
I let it slide, and the guy thanked me for the effort.
I did this partly b/c they incorrectly denied me there once before, (I had paid for club membership, but didn't have my card yet). I had receipt, DM #, etc.
Anyway, I think it's fine to be altruistic.

That response would have irritated me, unless there is something in the rules about guest admittance being a function of the existing occupancy of the lounge.

I mean, not that I'd necessary go ballistic if I was just trying to do a guy a favor, but that to me seems like an improper response. Either you had guest privileges or you didn't, but it sounds like the agent had a bone to pick with the guy in front of you about his own attempt to enter the lounge.

Is there precedent for this? Have others run into lounges that close off to additional entrants when they get too full? Is there something in your lounge membership guide that states that they can either deny you entry or deny your guest privileges at their discretion?

Same thing happened to me at an Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge -

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...vr-dragon.html

JAL certainly does this with their first class lounges and I have seen the Sakura lounge very full in NRT on occasion and would not be surprised if they did it there as well.

I've had two run ins with it, unfortunately :(

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...rals-club.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...n-skyclub.html

I didn't make a habit of it when I was a lounge member but every so often I was in a situation where I thought "this would be a nice thing to do". I still think it was right and when and if I have a membership again I'll do similarly. If airlines have a problem with it then spell out "you must know the guest" or something like that.

roberino, I think you did the right thing ^ and the guy complaining about it was out of line.:td:

I travel almost entirely in Y but pay for an annual lounge membership (QF) out of my own pocket. I'm allowed one guest but I rarely take advantage of it: 90% of the time I'm either alone or with colleagues who have their own membership.

I don't often get chatty with other passengers on long-haul, but on one SYD-SIN flight the lady next to me and I struck up a conversation in the last half-hour or so of the flight. Like me, she had 3-4 hours at SIN before continuing to Europe, so we exited the plane, I offered to guest her into the QF lounge. Once there, I pointed out the key amenities, invited her to make the most of it, and went off to do my own thing. My reasoning, like others in this thread, is that my membership fee assumes that for some percentage of visits, there will be a second person.

For those pointing out the lost revenue from someone who was willing to pay, it can go the other way; I once hosted a colleague into the (pretty basic) domestic QF lounge at OOL. It was his first visit, but his job was starting to require more travel, so that one visit convinced him to sign up for himself.
I agree that if airlines have a problem they should change it; I suspect they won't because (a) it's too difficult to draw the line, (b) it's too difficult to enforce, and (c) it doesn't matter to the lounge whether my guest is RadioBloke or the lady I just met on the plane. (Actually, I'm pretty sure she consumed less grog than RadioBloke would have. ;))

Family members only? Family or colleagues? Family or colleagues or old friends? How long do you have to have been friends? I could have said the lady at SIN was my sister-in-law; how would they prove she's not? "Well, I've been sitting next to - sorry, what's your name again? - for 8 hours in Y, so yeah, I'd say she's a friend." :D

They just don't have time for that at the lounge entry. Which is fine by me.

It's the potential for the response in the two threads above that has put me off anonymous guesting before now. I suspect that one reason it may have worked this time is that the MAN Aspire lounge is not an airline-specific lounge so the more people they can get in the more fees for them from the airlines. I suspect that had I tried this at LH's SEN lounge in FRA I would have been told that it wasn't allowed.

Umm..when you were stopped by police did they not asked you to produce your driver's license?

In a similar fashion, the lounge operators can ask the member to produce the name of the guest beforehand. Therefore, no random strangers can exploit this guest privilege.

But again, I don't mind the present arrangement at all, and the OP did the right thing. I'll just saying if the lounge operator want to stop this, they can.

End of discussion? I don't think so.

Take it easy. You seem pretty agitated here, you don't happen to work at one of these lounges by any chance? Hehehe. :D (relax-only kidding).

No, a loophole here is the lounge operator should have specified the member to name the guest beforehand, and not just arrange a guest entry in this impromptu manner. That way, no random guest will be permitted to enter. But they don't do this. So this issue is probably not such a big deal for the lounge operators.

It can be unwise to drink something that has been out of your sight. If you wouldn't leave a drink unattended in a bar, don't do it in a lounge either.