Virgin Australia tightens airport lounge rules

An unexpected update to Virgin Australia’s lounge rules, issued last night to frequent flyers, will take effect this Thursday November 9 – and it’s sent millions of the airline’s Velocity members into a tizz.

But their concerns are less about the changes being made to Virgin’s Lounge Terms and Conditions and more about trying to puzzle out what’s actually being changed.

From a higher perspective, the mass email appears to have been triggered by recent changes to standard Australian Consumer Law prohibiting “unfair contract terms” – which is not to say that Virgin has been operating under unfair terms, simply that like many other Australian companies the airline has enacted a broad revision of its lounge T&Cs to fully comply with ACL changes rolling out on November 9.

(Some Executive Traveller readers will also have received similar T&C updates from a range of other companies and service providers in recent weeks, again falling into line with the new Australian Consumer Law provisions.)

And while Virgin Australia’s mass mail-out broadly indicated what was changing in the updated Lounge Terms and Conditions, it was left to Velocity frequent flyers to identify the specific changes which will apply from November 9.

So here’s a take-away – an Executive Traveller executive summary, if you will – of the new Virgin Australia airport lounge rules, as best we can tell.

No more take-away

This is perhaps the most obvious addition, and it’s a sensible one we can see few people disagreeing with.

With the exception of food and drink “permitted for takeaway as indicated in the Lounge,” all guests at Virgin Australia lounges must “consume all food and beverages made available in the Lounge within the Lounge.”

This may have been put in place to prevent travellers in economy class from pocketing assorted sandwiches and snacks to take on their flight as a BYO alternative to Virgin’s ‘buy on board’ menu.

That said, we’d expect coffee served in take-away cups would be permissable for travellers to sip as they walk to the boarding gate, or even as a ‘grab and go’ option using on-arrival lounge access after a flight.

No more non-flying guests

An apparent loophole in the previous lounge rules could have been read to allow people accessing Virgin Australia’s lounges using a credit card (such as American Express Platinum) to bring in guests who were not flying on the same day, indeed not flying at all.

This is an area where airlines have been cracking down – earlier this year, Qantas decreed that only guests departing on same-day Qantas and partner flights are allowed entry into the lounge – so it’s no surprise that Virgin Australia has used this week’s update to the lounge rules to close that loophole.

The same guests-must-fly rule also now applies to “purchased Single Entry” lounge passes (which the airline sells for $65 each) and also introduces a time limit of two hours prior to the guest’s flight.

As spelt out in Section 5.2b: “Guests accessing the Lounge with a purchased Single Entry or as an Eligible Partner Credit Card Holder may only access the Lounge in the relevant departure port when travelling on an Eligible flight, up to two hours prior to their scheduled departure time of their Eligible Flight.”

At the same time, Velocity Silver members wielding a lounge pass are no longer subject to that two-hour time limit

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club lounge access on arrival

‘On-arrival’ access to Virgin Australia’s domestic lounges remains available for Velocity Gold and Velocity Platinum members, along with a broad cohort of flyers including business class passengers, members of Virgin’s exclusive invitation-only Beyond program and members of the paid Virgin Australia Lounge program.

However, section 5.3 now sees members of the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club program added to that list.

While a specific tier hasn’t been called out, we expect this will apply only to Flying Club Gold members (the highest of the three Virgin Atlantic Flying Club tiers).

Lounge access for Alliance, Link flights

Virgin Australia has also deliberately included domestic flights operated by partners Alliance Airlines and Link Airways on selected regional routes to cover lounge access by loungeworthy passengers (such as Velocity Golds and Platinums).

It’s a small but sensible clarification which will remove any uncertainty for Virgin travellers.

Those are the key call-outs from this round of updates to Virgin Australia’s airport lounge rules – if you sight any others of significance, please share them as a comment below.

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