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Qantas has dropped its long-standing plan to build a dedicated First Class lounge at London Heathrow. Instead, the airline’s existing Heathrow Terminal 3 lounge will be reconfigured and given an invitation-only premium dining room, modelled on the one Qantas recently opened in Auckland.
[HT: Executive Traveller who appear to have broken this story and got the details directly from Qantas International CEO Cam Wallace]
What was originally planned
The dedicated London first class lounge was first announced by then-CEO Alan Joyce back in February 2023, as part of a broader AU$100 million (US$68.8 million) investment in Qantas’ lounge network. The original opening target was late 2025.
At the time, the plan was for an entirely separate space within Terminal 3, open to First Class passengers on Qantas, First Class passengers on other Oneworld airlines and with Oneworld Emerald elites.
Essentially, the same kind of access rules as the Qantas First Lounge in Los Angeles and the Cathay Pacific First lounge at Heathrow T3 already have.
It would have made the London lounge the fifth Qantas First Lounge in the network, joining Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, and Singapore.
The existing T3 lounge, which currently serves all premium passengers and Oneworld Emerald and Sapphire members together, was going to become a dedicated international business lounge, presumably where Sapphire elites and Business Class flyers would continue to be accommodated.
The plan also included direct boarding from the new First Class lounge to the aircraft and sweeping views of the airfield.
The timeline for the new lounge was always tied to the non-stop Sydney – London Project Sunrise route, which has itself been pushed back repeatedly, first to 2026, and now to October 2027, as confirmed this week at a Qantas event in Toulouse alongside the unveiling of the airline’s first Airbus A350-1000ULR.
Why the lounge plan fell apart
According to Wallace, the issue was simply a lack of available space. Speaking to Executive Traveller, he said Qantas had looked at three or four spaces, but had been unsuccessful in securing any of them, citing congestion and ongoing changes at Heathrow.
That’s easily believable given that Heathrow is a notoriously space-constrained airport, and a dedicated First Class lounge with the kind of footprint Qantas was describing was never going to be a simple thing to carve out of an already crowded terminal.
What’s happening instead
Rather than a standalone lounge, Qantas will reconfigure its existing Heathrow T3 lounge, adding somewhere in the region of 40 to 60 additional seats and more showers on the upper level.
Some of that extra space will come from shrinking the lounge’s downstairs bar (which will probably disappoint some people) and some will come from redesigning the staircase between the lounge’s two floors.
The bigger change will be the new premium dining room that is now planned, which will offer à la carte meals and upgraded wines to First Class passengers, Chairman’s Lounge members, Qantas Platinum/Platinum One members and their Oneworld Emerald equivalents.
We’re told that this is a direct copy of the dining concept Qantas introduced in its Auckland lounge, which Wallace described as having been a strong success.
Work is expected to begin on the redesign within the next six months, with the goal of having the upgraded lounge ready by October 2027, in time for the first non-stop Sydney-London flight (given how slowly things like this move in the UK, they had better get going asap).
Qantas doesn’t appear to have fully decided whether the renovation will be done in stages or whether the lounge will need to close for a short period, although Wallace has suggested that a staged approach is more likely, with displaced passengers directed to other Oneworld lounges at Heathrow in the meantime.
Quick thoughts
This is disappointing.
The original plan wasn’t a first-class-only space tucked away for a handful of passengers. It was meant to be a well-sized space with sweeping views of the airport, a focus on wellbeing features, and direct access to boarding gates which was open to Oneworld Emerald elites as well as First Class passengers.
Essentially, the same model Qantas already runs in Los Angeles and the same model Cathay Pacific uses for its own First Class lounge just down the hall from the Qantas lounge at Heathrow T3.
As a fan of the Qantas First Lounge in LA, I was looking forward to having something similar (possibly better) at Heathrow, and a Qantas First lounge in T3 would have alleviated quite a bit of pressure that the Cathay Pacific First Class lounge comes under during busier periods.
A dedicated dining area isn’t really going to make up for missing out on that, and it will be interesting to see how Qantas will make the new plan work given that its Project Sunrise aircraft are going to be ferrying more premium cabin passengers than the current Qantas aircraft.
The originally planned lounge would have given Qantas considerably more space to accommodate all the new premium cabin passengers that Project Sunrise will bring (the Project Sunrise flight will add 6 First Class and 52 Business Class seats each way to the Qantas LHR – SYD route).
The new plan just moves things around in the existing space and I’m not convinced that this will work as well as Qantas hopes – I suspect (I’ll be delighted if I’m proven wrong) that the lounge will get quite crowded in the hours leading up to the Qantas departures, and that’s probably not the kind of experience most people paying the Project Sunrise fares will be expecting.
Also, it’s worth wondering what may be lost with the lounge reconfiguration. Sure, there’s going to be a new dining area for First Class and top-tier elites, but will that mean cuts to what Business Class and other eligible passengers will be offered? On this issue, Qantas is being very quiet, so we’ll have to wait and see what the final redesign looks like.
Bottom line
Qantas has scrapped its plans for a dedicated London First Class lounge due to a lack of available space at Heathrow, opting instead to reconfigure its existing T3 lounge in an attempt to make more space.
An Auckland-style premium dining room will be inserted into the ground floor for First Class passengers, Chairman’s Lounge members, Qantas Platinum/Platinum One members and their Oneworld Emerald equivalents with the work is expected to be completed by October 2027, in time for the launch of Qantas’ first non-stop Sydney-London flights.
It may not be the fault of Qantas that it failed to get the space it wanted in a space-constrained terminal like Heathrow T3, but I’m not convinced that the airline’s backup plan will be good enough to take the strain of the increased premium cabin passenger numbers as a result of Project Sunrise and this could lead to some frustrated flyers.
What do make of the new plans Qantas has set out?
