Originally Posted by
frandrake
I've been UA Gold for a while as my company had super advantageous fares with UA and despite my best routing efforts to fly OW, I ended up flying UA a lot.
My take is that the app is better, miles never expire and the ground offering is great especially if you have access to Polaris lounges. A very consistent experience across the US and a good one (a part from when the lounge is massively overcrowded).
The planes however....omg....super old. Noisy, dry and with a poor onboard service. Overall, I still prefer BA/AA although I see the allure of going full UA if you are LHR based and travel mostly to the US and want to redeem miles for US flights or DACH/PT destinations.
The 757s are awful, so much so that I'll fly from GLA to LHR rather than take one from EDI if I can avoid them. The 767s have seen better days but the 777s and 787s are no worse than what BA have for the same fleet. The A350 on BA is much better than anything UA have though.
I do think the A321XLR will be a game changer for UA TALT offering as it will have proper Polaris and be replacing 30+ year old 757s with the 2-2 business that's at least 20 years out of date. Those things still have the special iPod connector on the IFE!