United Airlines and CNN’s Richard Quest have been working for three years on the latest edition of Business Traveler. The program tracks United’s Polaris Business Class from its birth to takeoff.
I think this three-part video is 24 minutes well invested. You’ll track the seats conception, rationale, production, and launch. You’ll also sample the new soft product onboard.
Does it pass Richard Quest’s test? With flying colors.
This is not exactly an unbiased look at Polaris. In fact, Quest seems to be one of the biggest cheerleaders of United Polaris and United in general. But it’s still a great look at Polaris and worth your time to watch. And to his credit, Quest brings up lounge overcrowding, broken ice cream dishes, and the Dao incident.
Great video! It certainly wasnt all sunshine and rainbows Quest talked about, as he mentioned the lounge being too small and the cracking bowls.
But I sure do appreciate Quest and his opinion. Didn’t he travel around the world flying LCC’s only??? I would never even if it was my job…
He did indeed do an RTW trip on LCC’s only. Although sadly one of the routes he used (G4 from HNL to LAX) no longer runs which is sad.
That series was really fun though, I’m actually replicating a similar trip to his next month across 44 days. Flying 90% with just LCC’s except to get between HNL & LAX and LAX to LHR. Used 20K AS miles to jump on AA just as they announced the devaluation lol.
His trip was suspiciously expensive though IMO. Somewhere around $2K. Mine came out to about $850 total
CNN. Unbiased 🙂
One lounge. A few planes. Fleet won’t be retrofitted until 2020. Same old bs from United.
That United is “proud” of a product about 5 years behind every decent airline is too much. Still serving champagne in plastic glasses. Nothing exudes premium quality quite like plastic.
Munoz: blah blah blah blah blah. Platitude. Blah blah blah blah. Platitude, platitude. Blah blah blah. Platitude. Blah. Platitude.
Anyone notice they showed Qantas first instead of business?
Great videos, though Quest made a fairly serious and basic error in the second part when he claimed that only United Polaris customers are allowed to access the Polaris lounge. Of course much of the reason for the crowding is that *all* Star Alliance international business class customers departing ORD have access — and United isn’t allowed to change that because of Star Alliance rules. The new expanded lounges can’t come soon enough.
you actually made it into CNN’s videos. Think i spotted you in the 1st video @ 3:02 mins and in the 3rd video @ 5:19 mins.
That’s Zach Honig, Editor of the Points Guy. Unfortunately, I was not on this inaugural flight.
I was on that inaugural flight, in seat immediately in front of Richard Quest. I have also been back and forth between Hong Kong and SFO several times since. There’s no doubt it’s a massive upgrade but it is also clearly years late and is landing as competitors are already taking another step ahead. Personally I loved the plastic champagne flutes so I’m sorry they proved impractical. I also love the gel pillows, which Quest tipped me off to ask for. Storage could be better but, hey ho, I’m going to be flying on United anyway so this is MUCH better than the alternative!!!
One thing I have noticed is that the flight from SFO to HKG has been delayed each time I’ve been on it since March. Usually the excuse has been technical problems with the aircraft. Seems there’s still some work to do to stabilise even this small set of upgraded planes.
I wonder how many of the 869 (SFO-HKG) delays are due to technical problems and how many are actually due to connections. United has several Asian flights departing within a couple hours of each other, and there is only one flight a day for most of them, so the airline has a lot of reason to hold the Asian flights for arriving connections. When I take 869 I connect from Florida, and there are probably scores of flights arriving with passengers connecting to the Asian flights. Missing them would cause a lot of problems for the passengers and for United. It may be easier to hold 869 to collect these connecting passengers up to a point. Perhaps someone with specific knowledge of United’s procedures concerning this issue could comment.