Originally Posted by
zombietooth
Man, you nailed this. I don't make flying decisions based on the lounges, I focus only on price and routing. For my last Tokyo trip, DL never priced below 8K for a decent routing (DL is more convenient for me to HND) while UA priced down to 6.3K, so I flew them. There was no difference in the reliably horrible
Polaris food in either direction. I didn't eat anything except the sundae.
I think people are missing the fact that the reduction in food quality was a planned move by UA. Cutting costs is what Kirby is all about. It's obviously not hurting their business - I watched the
Polaris cabin sell out over a week before my last flight (I was trying to upgrade my daughter and she never had a chance with 1K PlusPoints).
I largely agree with the point around cost cutting with the food and still selling out cabins. And I'm certainly not helping United rethink that in any way. Ultimately I value the seat and routing above food and other soft product details and being ORD based, that will typically align with United.
I do hope that some of the battles they wage at a local level (specifically ORD as an example) help drive some improvement. American's new lounge they announced at ORD looks nice - though we know from United it's easy to make a lounge look nice and still serve slop. If American could update their flagship lounge I can hope it would spur United to uplevel things a bit. I like the Polaris lounge in Chicago overall (and food was solid on my recent visit), but I have not really seen any catering improvements in the air in the last few years. I'm not willing to give United credit for improving from inedible to 'mostly consumable'. Food can be subjective but for me it is still terrible.