FLYING KANGAROO OR LURKING LOUNGE LIZARD?
David PenberthyEvery man has his price. Mine was a Neil Perry club sandwich. For a few sensational years I was a member of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge. It was an absurd benefit bestowed by dint of marriage. As the husband of a then federal politician, my associate membership turned up unexpectedly in the post some time in 2016. A sexy matt black card, set in a swanky presentation envelope with a personal welcome note from Alan Joyce himself. I umm-ed and ah-ed about the ethics of accepting it but figured no taxpayers were being harmed in the process, and I never reported on aviation so, what the hey, it’s club sandwich time. The sandwiches, I should add, were excellent. As indeed was everything.
In 2019 Dad and I spent a week in New Orleans. We had done New Orleans right, meaning we had done a number on ourselves. We saw about 20 bands in seven days, ate turtle soup, oysters Rockefeller and table-flambeed steak Diane at Brennans, Commanders Palace, Galatoires and Cochon, drank our body weight in bloody Marys, sazeracs and hurricanes. On one action-packed day my medically trained father saved a meth addict from swallowing his tongue while having an epileptic fit, Dad drily saying “Good thing your mother isn’t here”, while I rang 911 and gave the ambos the poor chap’s location.
We needed to return home and re-enter civil society.
Our American Airlines flight from Louis Armstrong International to Dallas Forth Worth was cancelled when lightning hit our plane while preparing for takeoff. We were stuck in New Orleans for another day and missed our Qantas flight from Dallas to Sydney. We were completely stuffed as the flights weren’t connected, so when we made it to Dallas the following day, Qantas figured we were just no-shows. We wound up stuck in a giant, motionless queue with hundreds of people in the same situation, nervously watching the clock as the economy check-in staff moved at glacial pace towards resolving our concerns. We were going to miss our flight home again.
I told Dad I had an idea. “Maybe we should give the Chairman’s card a whirl and see if it helps?”
We approached the first-class desk. I was dressed like a dag in jeans, sneakers and a New Orleans Saints NFL T-shirt. The guy at the counter said tersely: “No cutting the queue, this area is for first-class passengers only.” “Yes, I know, I was just wondering if, as Qantas Chairman’s Lounge members, we are in the right spot?” His demeanour changed in an instant. “Oh sir, I’m sorry, you shouldn’t be here at all! See that escalator? Just go up there to those double doors and they will look after you.”
The doors opened. Dad and I were bathed in golden light. We were in the American Airlines First Class lounge. I explained our situation to the concierge, a stunning 40-something Texan woman with sculpted American hair. “Now Dave, I’m a Cowboys girl and normally wouldn’t help a Saints fan, but in your case I’m going to make an exception. Y’all get yourselves a drink. Leave your passports with me and I’ll have this sorted in a flash.”
Three minutes later we were sitting in deep leather chairs eating jumbo shrimp and veal tournedos with asparagus and bearnaise sauce and sharing a bottle of Hugel Riesling. The concierge sashayed over just before the cheese plate arrived and handed us our passports and boarding passes.
I mention this story for two reasons: one, it was one of the more entertaining experiences of my life, and two, nothing exposes the yawning gulf in the travelling experience than the two worlds we inhabited at DFW that night. By simply flashing that little black card, we exited a miserable place where frazzled travellers were crying and shouting, recharging dead phone batteries on powerpoints in the wall, waiting for toilet cubicles to become free, sleeping on the ground, paying through the nose for food and drinks … to another where a woman who looked like Raquel Welch would sort out your flight dramas while you ate giant prawns someone had already peeled for you and then had a hot shower
with exotic unguents and poultices before floating on to the plane.
Herein lies the problem with the Chairman’s Lounge. As I said, the cost of running something as extravagant as the Chairman’s Lounge is borne entirely by Qantas. But there is no quid without a pro quo. For Qantas, the Chairman’s Lounge is akin to what’s known in international relations as soft diplomacy. Whatever its actual costs are to the national carrier,
the unquantifiable benefits to the airline are threefold: it makes Chairman’s Lounge members think more highly of Qantas, it makes them feel less inclined or wholly uninclined towards being critical of Qantas, and it gives them absolutely no capacity to relate to the lived experience of economy-class passengers.
Who are the people who find themselves in this happy situation? Only every senior decision-maker, policy-framer and opinion-shaper in the land, every federal MP, premier and opposition leader, many if not most state ministers, every senior judge, chief executives, senior members of the media, and all of their families, the happy hangers-on like my old man and I, living the maxim allez les bon temps rouler on Alan’s expense en route from The Big Easy.
I didn’t use the Chairman’s Lounge that often in Australia, mainly because I don’t travel much, but whenever I did I would bump into Labor, Liberal and Greens MPs who I knew through my work. In light of the scandals that have beset Qantas over the largesse afforded to Joyce, its treatment of its staff and customers and its reputational collapse versus historically less well-regarded airlines, you can’t help but wonder whether every one of them has been a bit co-opted by the chumminess of it all.
The motivation of Qantas in what is superficially an innocent act of corporate generosity was plainly illustrated by what happened when my wife quit politics. We received a letter from Qantas soon after explaining that regretfully her and my membership would be expiring.
I can’t stress enough, that is not a complaint. I should thank Qantas for all the fun I had. But it does say something about the transactional nature of the arrangement, where the intention quite clearly on the airline’s part is to make people in positions of policy influence feel indebted and co-opted, and to send them politely on their way when they return to being just another average punter.
A question for me here. Would
I have written this piece or others bagging Qantas if I were still a Chairman’s Lounge member? You would hope the answer to that is yes. Without fear or favour, to employ a journalistic cliche. But you know, those club sandwiches …
For what it’s worth, my theory is that the avalanche of media criticism this past few months has been like a dam wall bursting. Historically, the press had pulled its punches with the national carrier, in part because of the relationships outlined above. As Joyce and the airline were left exposed, as per the emperor’s clothes, fighting fires on so many fronts ranging from reliability to cost to remuneration to the uproar over Qatar’s expansion plans, the media has entered all-bets-are-off mode. About time too, frankly. It was all
a bit cute, and suss, and as Groucho Marx said, I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member