New oneworld Lounge At Seoul Airport Turning Away Eligible Passengers

by Gary Leff

The oneworld alliance has opened up its first ‘alliance lounge’ at Seoul Incheon airport. There’s been a tremendous amount of fanfare for this week and a half old space. But there are teething pains, because the lounge is improperly denying access to customers with eligible oneworld status, even who are flying business class.


Credit: oneworld

The new oneworld lounge is 6,000 square feet located on the fourth floor of terminal 1, near gate 28. The lounge’s hours are even geared towards allowing Qatar Airways passengers to have access. It is open 7:30am – 11:45 p.m. except Mondays and Saturdays where it opens at 4:30 a.m.

  • The last oneworld airlines departure, other than on Qatar Airways, is Finnair at 11 p.m.
  • The Qatar Airways flight departs 12:15 a.m. – 30 minutes after lounge close.

However according to the lounge’s General Manager (who is an employee of Swissport, which is contracted to run the lounge),

[A]ll oneworld sapphire members on oneworld flights are very valuable customers for us and of course are high tier members who can access the OW lounge.

However, even though the grand opening was on the 20th of January, the local Qatar Airlines has still decided to use the existing Asiana lounge. I understand that their plans to use the OW lounge in the future are being discussed internally.

Therefore, we are waiting for the QR passengers to be served in accordance with the QR instructions.


Credit: oneworld

Qatar Airways (and Cathay Pacific) have contracts with Asiana’s East lounges. Malaysia Airlines has a contract with Korean Air for lounge access. But oneworld sapphire and emerald members flying a oneworld airline, and passengers flying a oneworld airline in business or first class, officially have access to the new oneworld lounge.

Generally speaking, oneworld airlines do not even pay each other when their elites access each others’ lounges the way that Star Alliance members do cross-billing for lounge access. So denying, say, an American Airlines Executive Platinum member flying Qatar Airways doesn’t make sense. I’ve reached out to oneworld hoping to resolve this issue.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. What a mess! That oneworld lounge should have opened after all the contracts have been sorted out.

  2. Had a similar problem flying Qatar from Capetown to Doha last month; was denied access to the British Airways lounge at CPT despite OneWorld Emerald status because they “were not accepting anymore Qatar passengers today”.

  3. Really? Boo hoo! The article stated that the lounge was having some “teething pains” My word, condemning the lounge and complaining already? You have not even given the lounge a chance to fix their “teething pains”. All will be well and all elites will be granted their rights to the lounge.

  4. Yeah, I had the same experience as Ron in Capetown. I was denied access, even after showing them the rules and arguing for a bit, to the BA lounge as a One World Emerald flying business class on Qatar Airways. Totally ridiculous. To bad there seems to be yet again another lounge pulling the same shenanigans.

  5. BA pulled this one me in PHL. They claimed that since I was back in the states and only on AA for the rest of the trip, I should go to the AA lounge. Emerald notwithstanding.

  7. Incheon has better public spaces. Public showers, public high end lounges, public sleeping rooms, kid playrooms. The lounges there are basic cafeterias. I am Oneworld Sapphire and don’t sweat it. The Shared Cathay “upper class” lounge isn’t much in Incheon. Fantastic airport, and all you need is public spaces.

  8. Was at ICN last Friday on a QF ticket and QF Gold/OW Emerald, and was able to access the new One World Lounge, despite Qantas also issuing me invites to the Korean Air Lounge (which was their reciprocal lounge partner).

    Not seeing any teething problems, in that regard…

  9. OW really needs to get its act together on consistency of lounge access. While AA will grant access to its lounges based on my BAGold/Emerald status even if I credit my flight to AA or AS, AS refuses entry to its lounges unless I credit my flight to BA instead of to my AS or AA accounts.

    When I was moving from AA ExecPlat to BAGold and crediting my flights to BA, I could still access the BA First lounge based on my AA status. It appears AS has made up its own lounge access rules and has been permitted to do so.

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