Years ago UA invited some fliers and employees to take part in test flights, with a United Club closed off to function as what's now a Polaris lounge and take a flight loaded with pillows and bloody mary carts.

Anyone else take part in them - maybe you'll see yourself in this video I came across - was posted a couple years ago


What's left from the concept flights...

2 pillows, a mattress pad, sometime PJs, petit fours, and the Polaris lounges

 

You need to send that to Oscar to remind him that Polaris was to be a game changer on board, not just the lounges, and not devolve into the same old service with a different seat.

 

 

That 747 sure is awesome though.

 

I'd prefer to have the crab in the Polaris meal, rather than during the meal service.

 

 

my how things have fallen. i recall when service started how impressed i was. disapointed that only ORD had a lounge, but i loved the overall service and had GS the last 3 years partly because of it. This will be my last year as I'm only at $2500 spend so far this year and expect that trend to continue. It just isn't worth the premium.

The matress pad looked much thicker in the video than the actual one
Where did some of those seats come from? i don't recognize. there looked like a few single aisle J seats but none looked recognizable to me
The midflight snacks are pathetic. On my last J flight, I actually went to Y to ask for a mid flight snack and Y told me nope- these are for Y customers. So the flight after that, I booked Y. When Polaris first started, I loved the hot rice or noodle bowls mid flight, plus sandwiches and tomato soup. to be honest at this tpoint, they'd be better off just going to the pre polaris noodle soup. at least they catered 50 on a 747 so it was easy enough to get 2 or 3.

 

 

And Wine. And Champagne. And PJs. And meals that don't look like TV dinners from 1970.

 

Wow. How far things has fallen.

Veering a bit OT, but can anyone tell me what CO's BF service was like in 2004 and earlier, and what was cut after then? I'm curious!

 

Cold appetizers on a cart to pick (smoked salmon, prosciutto, smoked duck, or something like that - nothing caviar like)
Salad served as its own course in a large bowl - dressing poured for you
Bread basket like today
Main course on a plate (basically a steak house style menu - almost always a large cut steak or bone in meat offered in the choices) - they had a separate side dish of green beans or spinach, steak house style available but the mains had vegetables on them already
Cheese from the cart - not that different than now, better crackers I guess
Sundae and warm cobbler instead of the petit fours

Some other formalities like FAs using a small metal crumb sweeper like you'd see in a restaurant, the concierge greeting everyone before departure to arrange a shower, the cheese being brought on its own cart before the sundae, FAs changing into a 'serving jacket.' Real first class was pretty much always better, but for 2 cabin back then it was nice.

Food wise it probably only cost 20% more than what they're offering now - save for the extra FA positions

 

But the bread basket had more than one choice in it!

 

The problem was passengers drank far too much wine - it broke the UA budget. Horrible forecasting by UA.

 

 

It wasn't as much the quantity drank, as it was the sampling ... as in any open dining / open bar concept, people will try and sample more things when they are proactively offered. The wine flights and Bloody Mary carts did stimulate a huge amount of waste, so I understand trimming back these offerings. The oft-quoted "passenger demands for our wine surged 300%" was less about demand, and more about waste. In a two-zone J cabin with four aisle carts, there was a lot of waste.

So much of the original Polaris concept was un-necessary flair, and many of us gave feedback to that effect. Problem is, as you say, once given it is hard to taketh away. Management got the extreme willies on the wine front, and the pendulum swang the other way where there is "bare bones" sparse roundtrip provisioning of wine. They've decided it's ok to say "sorry, we don't have it", have the FAs in apology mode, and go from there.

They can't sift through all of the Polaris expense line items (PJs, slippers, bedding, wine, food, staffing etc) to any level of specificity ... it's easier to apply the hatchet / haircut method and chop everything.