When United first launched its Polaris service way back in 2016, it promised a complete revamp to select lounges at airports which was to be served with their new United Polaris Business Class product within a set time frame.
Their first Polaris lounge opened in Chicago Orlando International (ORD) back in 2016 and has remained as the sole Polaris lounge in United’s network, even though the Polaris service has expanded to other key airports like San Francisco. Soon after, the Polaris tracker went cold as United removed the expected opening dates from the airports slated to get the Polaris lounge refreshes.
Fresh off the United Polaris tracker, the Polaris lounge that was being built in San Francisco International (SFO) finally has an opening date of 30 April 2018! The timeline for Houston, Newark and Los Angeles has also been updated to reflect them being ready by Summer 2018 for IAH and EWR, and by Fall 2018 for LAX.
The tracker has been left blank for the longest of time and there wasn’t a single Polaris lounge that was opened back in 2017, so it’s great to finally see more lounges opening up. Aaron must be feeling rather salty right now as prior to his Polaris flight from San Francisco to Narita recently, he had the pleasure of slumming it out at the Global First lounge instead of enjoying a spanking new Polaris lounge to complement his Polaris Business Class experience.
Sadly though, United has been constantly performing service cuts to its Polaris services in-flight so you can expect that they’ll have some form of cost cutting in their new lounges too.
United is trying to keep the Polaris experience exclusive and as such, lounge access to the United Polaris lounges are only for the following passengers :
So if you’re flying out of an airport with a Polaris lounge on an economy class flight and hold Star Alliance Gold status, you will not have access to the Polaris lounge but instead would be redirected to a United Club or another Star Alliance lounge facility in the airport.Â
Side tracking a little, what is also noteworthy is that United has completed the retrofit of the new Polaris Business Class seat in 5 out of 14 Boeing 767-300ER aircraft which they use primarily to Europe.
Concluding thoughts
If you find yourself on a Star Alliance business class flight departing San Francisco from 30 April 2018 onwards, why not pop by the new United Polaris lounge and make the Milelion himself a little jealous? We welcome all pictures should you get the opportunity to enjoy the lounge!
[H/T : One Mile At A Time]
