Your letters and posts from our online forum

I am a Diamond member with Cathay Pacific (CX), which translates into Oneworld Emerald status. I was travelling in economy with Malaysia Airlines from Kathmandu to Kuala Lumpur with my parents (MH115 on January 1).

I was told I wasn’t allowed to bring a guest with me into the lounge, because the lounge in Kathmandu is not a Oneworld lounge, but a contract lounge.

I would like to clarify if that is indeed the case, because I have never encountered this policy before: on Oneworld’s website, it says Emerald and Sapphire members may invite one guest to join them in the lounge as long as the guest is also travelling on a f light operated and marketed by a Oneworld carrier. Where the site talks about lounges, it refers to lounges offered by Oneworld airlines, not operated by Oneworld airlines, and does not exclude contract lounges.

In the end, I decided not to travel on my CX Diamond card, and accrued on Etihad instead. I was told I could not have lounge access if I chose not to input my Oneworld membership onto the system and accrue somewhere else, because the ground handling company needs to match the records for the number of lounge passes offered with the passenger records – which was fine by me, but I was rather surprised to discover after I landed that the priority luggage tags on both pieces of luggage (which had been attached to the luggage at check-in) had been removed (presumably after my attempts to reason with the check-in staff on the lounge guest policy). Name and address supplied