Best lounge at Melbourne Airport T2 international terminal?

Hi,

You could technically access the new-ish Emirates lounge by way of your Qantas Gold status and based on your destination, provided the Emirates lounge is open at that time... but with Emirates no longer flying trans-Tasman from Melbourne, I don't think Emirates has any other morning flights after its 5am departure and so the lounge would likely be closed until 3pm or so, prior to Emirates' own flights to Singapore and Dubai in the evening.

If you don't want to burn your AMEX Lounge visits, a Priority Pass card will get you into the Plaza Premium Lounge next door, of course. Otherwise, you could use your AMEX lounge visit now and then purchase an extra AMEX Lounge entry at the door in December. (You can't normally buy your way into the AMEX Lounge: you need to have one of the cards that provides access, but if you do have one of those cards and you've used up your passes, there is an option to pay for further access at the door. I'd have to look it up, but off the top of my head the fee is about $55 or so per person.)

Melbourne Airport also has a pay-to-access Marhaba Lounge: it's not part of Priority Pass, so you'd need to purchase a visit.

Emirates lounge not open till 3pm

The QF lounge is actually perfectly good tbh.

Save your AMEX passes in the event you're flying Economy

The Qantas lounge is far nicer than the Amex lounge which I found very disappointing on a recent visit. The adjacent Priority Pass lounge was far nicer.

The food and drink in the lounge is fine.

Thanks for the feedback, first time flying out of Melbourne International, so wasn't sure what to expect.

The Qantas International Business Lounge in Melbourne is perfectly fine, with lots of space, decent food and drink (which at the time of your planned visit will be hot breakfast), and showers. It isn't anything to dedicate a chapter of a trip report to (it has nothing on the International First Lounge, for example), but it's a serviceable enough place to wait for your onward flight. I wouldn't waste an AMEX invite if you have access to this lounge.

MEL T2 does international outgoing security first, instead of immigration processing first.

Just out of interest, does anyone know what lounges Qantas offered in Sydney pre the current First class lounge (2007)

If I can tag on here, is the Air NZ lounge or the SQ SilverKris lounge better in melbourne? I will have access to both. I've read Chris's reviews of both here. Leaning towards the SQ lounge? Late night departure.