Originally Posted by
PsiFighter37
Got to experience TG and BR upfront today. Even on the TG A333 that has angle-flat seats, I felt the service was still superior to UA. Both the hard product on TG’s new 789 and BR’s 77W are really nice. The new Polaris seats are marginally better on the privacy front but much less spacious and have materially less storage capacity. As for food (and especially drink), it’s no contest. Veuve and Krug taste way, way better than whatever dreck UA has onboard. Wined - not even comparable (although my experiences on LO and OS lead me to think European airlines might do wine selection better).
The long and short of it...what was promised for Polaris from a soft product standpoint still fell far short of my other experiences. With the cutbacks, it’s not even close now. The new seat is really the only thing going for them, but it’s hardly anywhere to be seen for me (being EWR-based). I didn’t really understand how bad I had it at UA from a J experience until I tried something else. This makes me think that I may just really only try to hit Gold (or Plat) every year, and if I want to fly front of the bus internationally, I will use award miles or buy J directly on the *A airline that I want to fly.
I’ve really enjoyed all my flights (with the exception of the OS seat, which makes sleeping for someone even as small as me unpleasant) on this trip, but it makes me dread my TATL J flights on UA later this year (I used GPUs to move up)...I don’t want to go back!
It's an odd shame to spend tens of millions on a new global business product that was barely competitive at release, but now is just way behind competitive products that have been out in the market for years. I have my second Polaris 773 flight tomorrow, and both the outbound SFO TPE and inbound NRT SFO were 25-50% empty at 24h before departure. Two flights don't make a true sample, but still.....