After teasing upgrades for several months, United Airlines will improve its pre-arrival meals in Polaris Business Class.
United Airlines Improves Polaris Pre-Arrival Meals
Since the pandemic began, United has severely cut back on catering expenses on both domestic and international flights in premium cabins. On longhaul flights, the most noticeable cutback has been on pre-arrival service. Currently, business class passengers receive the same pre-arrival meal as economy class passengers or receive a packaged sandwich or snack similar to what United used to sell in domestic economy class.
But starting on February 1st, United will reinstate a pre-arrival meal in Polaris business class. No choice will be offered: only one meal will be available. Depending upon the station, hot entrees will be provisioned in a casserole dish on flights from the United Sates or in a black disposable container on inbound flights to the USA.
Entrée side offerings include fresh fruit or fruit cup and a bakery item such as muffin depending on market availability. All US outbound and select US inbound flights will also receive a packaged croissant and a roll.
Pictures shared with Live and Let’s Fly suggest the meal will resemble a pre-pandemic Premium Plus (premium economy) meal or current domestic premium transcontinental meal (likely with a fruit cup and not the real fruit bowl pictured above).
CONCLUSION
Look, it’s not much. Carriers like Air France, British Airways, and Lufthansa are offering a full meal service and pre-arrival service with ceramic plates and glass cups. They properly recognize that how a meal is served does not contribute to the spread of virus. But this is progress.
Sadly, with increasing travel restrictions likely to further restrict international travel, it is unlikely many will be able to enjoy these new meals anytime soon.
Are the pp arrival meals also upgraded?
Also, any word on resumption of arrival meal for long haul hawaii?
No comment on the PP meal in the memo, but usually they are the same. Nothing on Hawaii.
“how a meal is served does not contribute to the spread of virus” — i generally think this is true if and only if the length of the meal service is roughly the same. the bottom line is that you want to minimize the amount of time people spend unmasked, because as long as people are masked, the planes’ ventilation / filtration systems can take care of the rest of the particles that escape through the masks and they won’t travel far enough to reach other passengers. however, it seems to be the case that if you go from a 15-minute snack to a 1.5-hour course meal, you probably do get a meaningful increase in relative infection risk, although the absolute level of risk is probably still low enough for low-density settings like business class. of course, it may be the case that there are diminishing marginal increases in infection risk after a certain point (as in, an hour maskless might be only slightly more risky than half an hour, whereas half an hour might be significantly more risky than 15 minutes), in which case any reasonable meal is about the same level of risk. given the lack of rigorous data on such risks (really, this is the study that united should have done, instead of their propaganda stunt), i would still strongly advocate for absolutely minimal service (sandwiches that can be consumed in 15 minutes), staggered enough that no two adjacent passengers are maskless at the same time.
That level of service would be fine for economy. Not for a premium cabin
I don’t know why they bother: that looks like a meal served in a department store cafeteria c 1970.
If we are still in a travel crisis mode then airlines should accept that and acknowledge it’s too difficult to do a proper meal service as we’re used to; rather they can give out packaged protein bars rations, nuts, etc until things can return to normal. Of course the porkers/gluttons/ pretentious wankers would complain about it, but no one is going to die from getting their necessary calories via different means for a day or two.
I always have a selection of snacks in my hand carry for the many many times the airline food is inedible: I can only imagine it’s worse now, as I haven’t been on a plane since mid March.
Amex has opened their lounges, airlines have opened many of their standard lounges….
Polaris Lounge was such a big marketing tool to persuade people to fly Polaris… Whether using miles, upgrades or money… No Polaris Lounge is a big part missing.
They should give vouchers for future use, is my opinion.
The title of this article is misleading. UA is not upgrading their pre-arrival meals, they are merely restoring them, but even to that extent they are only really just bringing back a single entrée rather than giving Polaris customers a choice.
I flew Polaris when it launched and it was awesome. I really believed the days of GlobalFirst/BusinessFirst post merger were gone. But pandemic or not, UA does not offer a premium dining experience that really differentiates it from even PremiumPlus or other carriers. The meals now are almost the same as domestic First Class meals and quite frankly are less impressive than the last stretch of BusinessFirst days.