FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - ✨ Polaris (& PP) Retrofits: Schedule, ....
Old Feb 4, 2017, 2:04 pm
  #56  
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Originally Posted by Darlox
My opinion and $1.99 will get you a cup of coffee, but... I'm actually glad there is no formal rollout schedule, and hope that the posters' speculation up-thread about them waiting for feedback is correct. The question is, if they get that feedback and it's negative, what will they DO?? The process of certifying a new seat takes an enormous amount of time, and that's time when UA will be stuck with a lot of 2/4/2 J planes while the competition eats their lunch.

I've flown a lot of Int'l airlines over the last 10 years, and I'm here to tell you that just because a new J seat is aisle-access/herringbone/private-pod/suite, doesn't mean that it's comfortable or pleasant for a 12-hour trip. Sleeping in a seat that's slightly too narrow with one of those airbag seatbelts... or weird shell designs that are impossible to clean the interiors of properly, so they're always sticky or have all kinds of crud stuck in the crevices. Leg-rest designs that have a "lump" right under your hips that make laying down for more than 30 minutes impossible. There are ALL kinds of reasons why a "brand new" J seat can be much, much worse than the "old" seat that it replaced. A demo in a hangar, or honestly even a 3-hour ORD-SFO flight, aren't really going to tell you what it's like to be trapped TPAC on one of these birds, until people actually start doing it!

I, for one, want a LOT more data on the magical new Polaris seat before I'm going to start adjusting my travel patterns to hunt for it. Especially on the 787s and some of the 767s, the pmCO seat, particularly the two aisle-only seats in the middle of the cabin, really aren't that bad even by Int'l standards. That's sort of my bare-minimum standard for Polaris, that it can't REDUCE the actual comfort of what they're already flying, in the name of trendiness...
I actually have been hoping for a more formal and transparent roll out schedule with respect to the retrofits. I can't see how a custom designed seat deal can be stopped contractually, if for example customer feedback based upon 777ER hub-to-hub flights are somehow different than the "over 12,000 hours of research with 350 customers" that lead to the new seat design. It doesn't have to be a progress chart on United's webpage that shows conversion percentages for each plane type like Continental did when it introduced its flatbed seat or United has been doing to track inflight wifi (although that would be nice) but some announcement that shows a somewhat equally ambitious retrofit schedule that matches Polaris' aggressive Polaris marketing since June 2016 would underline United's seriousness to transform the company into a competitive airline that cares about its customers. How about an announcement this month that the first 763 is being retrofitted? 😉
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