Bad behaviour at airport
Dress standards and behaviour at the exclusive Emirates lounge at Perth International Airport have taken a dive since the alliance with Qantas in April, according to airport sources.
Beer-drinking Qantas passengers in thongs and singlets are now rubbing shoulders with Emirates' champagne-sipping first-class passengers.
According to the airport insiders, the offenders are "typically young - and not so young - resources workers".
Though Emirates local management declined to comment, sources say they are not amused at the drop in standards.
Qantas passengers use the Emirates lounge because they are travelling on an Emirates plane under a shared-flight arrangement called a code-share.
And the drop in standards is not confined to the Emirates lounge, with a recent verbal exchange between passengers over swearing in the Qantas International Lounge being witnessed by The Weekend West. .
The passengers were not travelling on a Qantas flight.
Qantas' International Lounge hosts a number of airlines, including Air New Zealand, Thai International and South African Airways.
Emirates' lounges are considered some of the more exclusive around the world because the airline is one of the few that offers first-class travel across most of its fleet. In the lounges, passengers can dine before a flight and all the seating is plush leather.
In October 2009, a significant spike in drunken incidents by resource workers returning to Perth forced Qantas to ban spirits and full-strength beer on all flights in WA.
The number of disruptive incidents on domestic flights has leapt from 67 cases in 2007 to about 500 a year in the past two years. Typically, binge drinking is blamed. But the Australian Services Union says the number of incidents is far higher because many minor incidents are not reported.
In contrast, the number of disruptive incidents has plummeted in the US from a high of 306 in 2002 to 130 in 2012.
In the US there are armed guards at security screening and, unlike Australian domestic airline lounges, US airlines give members only one free alcoholic drink.
