Originally Posted by
Unimatrix One
In here and other threads I keep seeing reports of Polaris Lounges being overcrowded, sometimes no seats available, etc. I don't understand how this happens. The PL user base is a very narrowly defined customer segment: people with long haul J or F tickets. There are no credit card holders, no one time passes, no *G admittance, etc. There is a finite number of J/F seats leaving from the airport every day which UA is well aware of. Why didn't they build enough capacity for this? Seems like a rather stunning failure by UA?
Additionally you have departing partner business class passengers.
There are at least three other factors
-- Utilization -- one would never expect 100% utilization, but utilization could be higher expected due to popularity. Also more may have switch from UC.
-- Stay duration -- how longer one stays in the lounge; Originating passenger how early do they arrive. Connection passenger, how long between flights. This be running higher as folk arrive early to spend more time due to popularity or connection times may have increased.
-- Demand -- if flights are spread out over the day versus being bunch at a few time periods. Same number of passenger peak demand could vary based on schedules. A change in domestic and/or international banks would have a significant impact.
At the time of determining capacity UA estimated these factors but for a variety of reasons these factors may have changed which could lead to problems at certain times.
There was a lot of speculation of these factors as the PL opened and the guesses at the period appear to suggest there might be few limited peak periods but generally OK. Unfortunately, this is far more than X number of passengers per day.