With ongoing construction on a new Polaris Lounge at Newark’s Liberty International Airport, United faced a critical overcrowding issue in its only other Terminal C United Club. The solution? A new “Pop-up” United Club near Gate C-124.
United’s lounge near C-74 is chronically overcrowded and far more so now that the main international lounge is under closed for renovation. To alleviate this overcrowding, United opened a “Pop-up” lounge near Gate C-124.
Although the club is temporary in nature and stuck in the corner of a busy concourse, United did a nice job of making it feel as enclosed as possible. The Pop-Up United Club has a real door and check-in desks like any other United Club.
Unfortunately, though, the lounge faces severe overcrowding issues. The pictures below were during a relatively “light” period in the middle afternoon before the evening bank of international departures to Europe. Even when I returned at 10pm for my delayed departure to Los Angeles, the lounge remained crowded and I had trouble finding a seat.
This “pop-up” club does not offer the full spread of food and alcohol that normal Untied Clubs offers. Instead, there is coffee, soft drinks, beer and wine–but no hard liquor. Instead of soups, salads, and other more substantial food items, there is only packaged snacks and whole fruit.
Wi-Fi works well, but the terminal also has its own relatively fast network.
CONCLUSION
Thus, I’d say this Pop-Up United Club is better than nothing but not anything you need to avail yourself too unless you run into an unexpected delay.
Last time I was there they had self serve cans of soda. That was pretty awesome.
Thanks for the update Matthew. I don’t suppose we know when the Polaris club with open do we? Unless you have a late pm flight clubs are always overcrowded at Newark.
More insulting was United’s note basically saying “sorry, now go spend money with OTG!”
They should comp every long haul C/F pax $20 at OTG In the interim.
EWR supposedly ready next summer but given the glacial pace (esp compared to AA) I doubt it.
Actually those items in the pop up United Club are exactly the items I wish some of the regular United Club’s offered.
Question: is that because you like to take some items to go or you feel that these snacks are better than the soup/salad/bread/oatmeal/cereal offered in “regular” United Clubs?
While I didn’t make the original comment, I’ll can provide my angle: While I miss the showers in the old lounge I do like to have packaged food to take on board (at-least when I’m not upgraded). I would visit the C-74 lounge, have some salad, cheese and a cappuccino, and before boarding grab some snacks to go from the pop-up lounge. Personally as I can only eat Gluten-Free food, the fact that the packaged food has an ingredients list and is not cross-contaminated like the standard lounge where lovely passengers drop crumbs of crackers into the salad bowl, the packaged food is definitely a plus for me.
I wish SFO International would do this! Their lounge is under renovations and they just put a sign in front saying “Come Back Next Summer” and we will have a new lounge. They do have a First Class Lounge (with a muscular attendant out front to make sure no unworthy patrons pass) but of no help to us dedicated (1K) passengers not in First. A “Pop-Up” or Temp lounge would be a show of appreciation by United to its loyal customers. Even if it occasionally was overcrowded at least something!!
Now that the Polaris club is open, does anyone know if this pop-up club will be replaced with a new permanent, full service club in Terminal C? Considering I usually fly through EWR, the elimination of the old club and replacing it with this pop-up club has seriously decreased the value of our club memberships.
Eventually, but it may take years.
Boy were my wife and I disappointed. We picked this lounge as it was close to our scheduled departure gate. I didn’t notice the words “popup” on the board outside the “real” Lounge. Worse, we used our purchased “lounge access” tickets for this. Even worse, United changed our gate to C83 which means we could have gone to the “real” lounge. Jeeze.
I used the popup lounge it wasn’t a bad experience for a short wait and when my flight was delayed they even transferred me to the real lounge via a golf cart it was a good experience…. can’t complain