Hipplewm

IAH will also handle a ton of SE US passengers who arrived in SFO, ORD or even EWR waiting for their CRJ/E175 to carry them home. Same for departure as well

PacificClipper

st530

There's also the NH (ANA) departure to NRT that leaves about an hour after the UA NRT flight.

st530

Just so I follow what you're saying, you mean XXX(Polaris)-->SFO/ORD/EWR-->IAH-->SE US cities not served through SFO/ORD/EWR, thus necessitating an extra stop in IAH? Or do you mean something else?

StuckinITH

What Hipplewm stated makes total sense. Many people underestimate the number of passengers coming from their small cities prior to a Polaris flight or returning to their small cities after a Polaris flight that will need to wait many, many hours in the Polaris Lounges.

I have a meeting in BTR and from ORD I need to stop in IAH. The SE US is full of those cities that don't have direct flights from the UA international hubs.

Hipplewm

Correct - there are TONS of small airports littered across Mississippi, Alabama, NE Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas etc that are only served by the B1-B31 gates at IAH

Even me, who lives in CHS, I try and route thru IAH as much as humanly possible. Airport is nicer, we get E75 most of the time. Mesa is light years better than CommuteAir. We do get mainline to ORD now, so that isn't bad either. IAH also has centurion lounge.

jcacciotti

Polaris lounge construction at LAX Terminal 7 Rotunda

Talked to UC staff today at LAX. Polaris Lounge due to open in November. Construction to close off Terminal 7 rotunda clearly visible. Taking that whole floor that housed the former GFL, including the former Rotunda. Lounge is to have 7 shower suites, 4 daybeds, dining room, bar, all the PL amenities.

EWR764

JFKflyer26

PsiFighter37

I hope they figure out a way to keep the regular *G/United Club members happy. The UC at LHR is by far the best one anywhere.

zeer0

Good news is *G/United Club members will still have 3 other good lounges at LHR. Can't say that for most of the airports that have a United Club.

UAL250

The AC lounge is tremendous, I might even like it better than the UC.

The LH lounge is solid too if you're in the A part of T2.

DCA writer

I'd meant to post this right after the FFG event, when cova and I heard this from United's IAD manager Omar. But I got distracted and assumed somebody else would write it up, then was out of town for a few days, blah blah blah... anyway, the new concept for a Polaris Lounge at Dulles is to build it outside of the envelope of the C concourse by gate C18, with a baggage-sorting facility on the ground level to ease bag transfers from connecting international arrivals. This way, UA would both fix an operational hangup (Omar said the current setup involves a lot of moving luggage by hand) and shoehorn in a PL without removing an existing lounge or intruding into concourse space that's already maxed out. And he said they aim to get that done by sometime next year.

As you can see in the screengrab from the United app, this space is between the Aerotrain connector and a gate that only seems to be used for regional jets, so it looks like you could build out something reasonably large there if you also evicted one of the retail tenants on either side of the restrooms. But large enough to accommodate the evening TATL bank? I'm going to have to wait to see these plans laid out in a presentation posted in an MWAA board-meeting agenda.

(What about replacing C/D entirely? I had some enlightening if not quite heartening conversations about that too, but I'll save them for which I wrote up in the appropriate thread.)

halls120

Let me guess - we'll be walking from the Aerotrain station to the C/D slum for another 20 years.

Artpen100