V-Flyer

We had a brief jaunt from Manchester to Munich to see family recently and flew with Singapore. Alas, no TP/miles were earned as we were travelling on cheap Y tickets!

On the outbound I forgot to enquire about AU benefits, but on the inbound I did as the website states we're entitled to priority baggage and boarding regardless of class of travel. The check-in agent was really nice, but said that despite our FC AU numbers having been input in the system, there was no mention anywhere of us being AU, and as a result she couldn't give us priority boarding as the system wouldn't allow it. She did, however, out of kindness/pity (delete as applicable) give us a priority tag for our check-in luggage. She'd never seen Virgin AU cards before and said they were very smart! In the end priority boarding wasn't required as they boarded everyone at the same time anyway, but it got me thinking that even though we're supposed to be eligible for lounge access at various airports when travelling with SQ, in reality will we be turned away due to either staff who don't know about the agreements, and/or incompatible computer systems? Has anyone else has much experience when flying with non-Delta partners? I did tweet VS with the details and they apologised and said they would forward it to their partnership team. Honestly, on this occasion it wasn't a big deal at all, I mainly asked out of curiosity, but if it were a long haul flight and we were denied lounge access I might be more concerned. I'm interested to hear other people's experiences

I don't think you'd be entitled to lounge access at MAN or Munich if flying in Y - that benefit only seems to apply to SQ's own lounges (of which there is one at LHR).

In an ideal world every airline employee and agency worker would have an intricate knowledge of every benefit every partner airline's FFs are entitled to but the reality is they don't and sometimes need educating - particularly at small outstations.

Sorry, I should have made it more clear; we weren't expecting lounge access there as there are no SQ lounges in MAN or MUC. I was just musing on the fact that it would be a shame to miss out on the lounge on a long haul flight were access was available due to a computer system incompatibility and staff who aren't knowledgeable. I was curious if the average experience when flying on partner airlines is similar to ours this morning, or if generally it works out OK. The main issue this morning seemed to be that the computer didn't recognise our gold numbers and she couldn't do anything about it as a result.