Originally Posted by
tzly6p
Here is my underwhelming experience: 1. No menu, the FA just recited a choice of entrees. 2. Food comes all at once on a tray identical to coach. Salad, entrée and dessert are on the tray. Dessert is gelato which is soup when I get to it. Adequate meal for coach, totally unacceptable for Polaris. 3. No after dinner drink cart with dessert offerings. 4. No on demand meals like soup or snacks like in the past. 5. Flatbed was very hard and uncomfortable. Later I learned you were supposed to ASK for a mattress pad. Why should I ASK for something so necessary?
I flew Polaris last week from IAH-AMS, and I agree fully with the above five complaints. Can’t comment on breakfast because I slept through it, but the dinner [burrata ravioli, in my case] was poor, the lack of a menu was disappointing, and the “vanilla-flavored” ice cream cup on my flight was dreadful for a long-haul business class desert and required one to eat the salad and main quickly to try to catch it while it was still in a near-frozen state. Pre-COVID, I generally found UA business-class meals to be decent [the beef short rib was reliable, if ever-present] and always got a menu, so UA has gone backwards here. And, an ice cream cup on the tray with the salad and main versus sundaes with a choice of toppings after the main course is completed and cleared is a big step in the wrong direction. Frankly, if UA is going to include the dessert on the tray with the salad and main course, the dessert ought to be something that isn’t going to melt.
The Polaris hard product remains good, except, as you have highlighted, the seat is uncomfortably firm in bed mode. I don’t usually care for mattress pads, but they are virtually essential on Polaris. Coming back on AF, also in business, my seat had a much more comfortable seat cushion when sleeping and I was served much better food, with a cheese course and dessert course each served separately following the main course.
Not only were mattress pads not offered proactively on my flight, I noticed a six-pack of UA shrink-wrapped slippers in the galley when I went to the lav, but those weren’t offered either.