Delays have plagued the new lounge under construction for Qantas at London Heathrow Terminal 3. During construction, passengers were directed to use the British Airways and American Airlines lounges. This has now changed.

Qantas passengers are now advised to use the excellent Cathay Pacific First Class and Cathay Pacific Business Class lounges for the moment. These are easily the best oneworld lounges in the terminal.

New Lounge for Qantas

London Heathrow is the premier port in Europe for Qantas. It is surprising that the airline never operated its own dedicated lounge here, preferring to use the lounges of other carriers.

The current Qantas concept is to have a single lounge for all eligible passengers. This is a great success in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore with those lounges considered to be very good indeed.


Since passengers are now using the excellent Cathay Pacific facilities, the new lounge Qantas are building had better be excellent. It would be an epic fail if passengers continued to use the Cathay lounge.

Qantas currently service London Heathrow twice daily through Dubai thanks to a partnership with Emirates. Prior to this, services stopped in Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong on the way to Europe.

Bye Bye Dubai

Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners are due to commence scheduled service with Qantas between Melbourne and Los Angeles in December 2017. The current Melbourne to London via Dubai service is changing from March 2018 when more 787s are in service.

Instead of stopping in Dubai, the new service will fly from Melbourne to London via Perth in Western Australia. This will be the first time a scheduled service will fly non-stop from the Australian continent to Europe. It is quite a big deal.


This leaves the current Sydney to London via Dubai service. Qantas have stated that most people on this service go through to London so it will go via Singapore instead of Dubai from March.

Passengers who are using the Qantas codeshare flights on Emirates via Dubai to visit other European cities will still be able to do this so the Qantas/Emirates partnership will remain intact. The two airlines plan to continue it for another five years.

Overall Thoughts

The new lounge in Terminal 3 at Heathrow for Qantas is hotly anticipated by frequent flyers. If it is anything like the popular Singapore and Hong Kong lounges it should be a winner so I for one am looking forward to it.

Qantas state they will make A$80 million in savings by transferring the remaining Dubai flight back to Singapore which makes sense as the airline has a much larger presence at Singapore than in Dubai.

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All images apart from the featured image via Qantas.