Lounge Review: Canberra Qantas Business Lounge

As befits the national capital, Canberra has one of the largest and best organised Business Lounges in the Qantas network. On the Monday after Easter, it was pretty deserted but looked very well maintained a bit like all the public spaces in Canberra.

Location

When you pass through security, with its body scanners and where you don’t have to unpack your computer and electronic devices, turn right, and follow the signs to the Qantas Lounges. You’ll find some glass doors with a broad staircase and escalators beyond, up one floor. At the top of the stairs, the Business Lounge is directly in front of you, with the Qantas Club lounge around to the right.

Design

This lounge holds the combined design language of Qantas Domestic and Qantas International Business lounges. There are remnants and new interpretations of the xxx lounge chairs, plus pale wood floors and dark brown carpet. More contemporary bucket chairs are grouped around circular tables with stainless steel legs, as are slimline lounge chairs. There are both solid chest heights walls and floor to ceiling wooden vertical slat dividers partitioning the space. Stools and higher tables for shorter stays are also dotted around the lounge.

Pale white ceilings, white-backed glass, and white net curtains complete the look.

The overall look is light, spacious and airy.

There is a separate desk/work area with access to a printer on the far left of the entrance, opposite the corridor to the bathrooms.

Food & Drink

To the right of the entrance are the food, bar and cafe area along one wall. Our visit was on Easter Monday morning, a public holiday. Barista made coffee was available along with pots of Bircher muesli, yoghurt and Chia jars, along with bowls of fruit salad and salad with boiled eggs. Orange, tomato and apple juice are available in large cold dispensers, as well as soft drinks (soda’s)

The breakfast selection was pretty much the same I have experienced at the Adelaide and Sydney lounges in the mornings. The only difference of note was the presence of bacon instead of baked beans which seems to be the specialty of the Sydney lounge.

Toast making facilities, as well as a collection of pastries were also available.

Bathrooms

Bathrooms are standard, and well maintained, (compared to Sydney) but lack the floor to ceiling stall dividers present in most other Qantas Business lounges. Amenities are by Aspar.

Comfort

This is a very comfortable lounge. I particularly like the number of Marc Newson designed lounge chairs. It’s a good call by current Qantas design head, David Caon to have retained these seats, and updated them. Food and beverage at Qantas lounges has taken a dive in my opinion since Accor took them over. It’s not bad, but its not good either. The evening standard seems to be bolognese sauce and pasta, and a rather awful chicken and sweetcorn soup, (in Sydney) which sits somewhere between China town, and country town.

2PAXfly Takeout

This is another timely reminder to wear your seatbelt when seated. Holding you close to your seat will protect you from the sort of injuries sustained on this flight, when unsecured passengers flew to the ceiling of the aircraft, and then came crashing down once the ‘drop’ ceased.

The hope will be that this is an anomaly – a ‘freak accident’ in casual parlance. If it is a systemic error either mechanical or electronic, then this is a larger concern for the airlines that fly Boeing Dreamliner 787 aircraft. Let’s hope it isn’t. If it is, it will pile on the woes to Boeing’s existing stack.

This is a great lounge, spacious, light and with plenty of different open and more enclosed intimate spaces. The lounge was fairly quiet and empty when we were there, but I suspect it would still seem open and spacious when more populated. With the amount of business and government people visiting Canberra, I suspect that this lounge can get quite full, especially when parliament is sitting. You won’t see politicians thought, as they will all be sequestered in the much more exclusive Chairman’s Lounge.

The only downside, unlike Melbourne, there are no runway or aircraft spotting views.

If I was back to the period in my career where I spent a day or so each month in Canberra, I would be happy to spend time in this lounge.