zombietooth

During the, "darkest of the Smisek days", I was able to use all of my GPUs where now, I will have almost 800 PPs expire worthless in JAN, my CPU rate was around 80%, FAs regularly recognized my status and were motivated and gracious, Polaris meals and service were predictably good on my regular routes, and domestic F had, at least, an edible selection of entrees-a far cry from today.

The new United mission statement/marketing campaign can be summarized as follows:

"... a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

uastarflyer

Smisek was gone 9 months before Polaris was announced and 15 months before the first Polaris equipped birds flew revenue flight

Smisek was around for Freshpoo

JimInOhio

Goalposts move. The all-aisle access on INTL widebodies was only an emerging feature or standard on airlines all over the world at the time. When CO introduced the Diamond seats many years before, they were about the best thing out there for J equipment as well. So, it's reasonalbe to think UA's J seating was going to evolve along with the rest of the airline industry whether they announced "Polaris" or not. And what was so great about Polaris anyway? The food still couldn't touch what TK and OS were offering, not to mention some of the Asian carriers.

uastarflyer

take it up with this, which is what I responded to

Polaris never existed under Smisek. The putrid coffee did however (chosen by Smisek and his cronies). Simple as that

zombietooth

As someone who has never drunk coffee, I didn't notice and didn't care. The point of my comment is that the food was better back then in J. Nomenclature changes nothing in this argument.

Amargolis

I don't mind the decoupling of globe and log but i vehemently HATE the black instead of blue in the app and on the website. I find it so visually jarring that it feels unfinished, or as though the proper color/elements didn't load and black was what it fell back to. Really an awful look.

"Let's hire a branding and design firm (Priestman Goode), spend a ton of money branding everything, and then launch an ad campaign where we change our brand font and change up our logo so it no longer matches everything we've put out over the last 8 years."

Makes sense... right?

angetenar

Yeah I definitely agree that the black is not a good look. I think the reason I find it jarring is the contrast of the blue in the globe logo and the black is very sharp. Also it seems like the globe blue changed from before? Or maybe it just looks different because of the black.

Amargolis

I literally thought it was the old continental logo from before UA cleaned it up a bit... that's how ugly it looks. Bright blue on black. Ew.

halls120

This, x1000.

bbmatt

is anyone else bothered by the neon blue logo thats in the title bar? It looks like a diff shade of blue (brighter) than what's on the app and boarding passes... why was this necessary to make it worse...

DELee

Was it necessary? No. I think we all agree. Was it being lazy and treating dark blue as the new black? Probably.

David

tuolumne

Great call outs. It would be very interesting to see what their internal branding guideline handbook has been updated to.

I do like the effort put into recognizing United as the US's de-facto flag carrier (if one had to be chosen).

tuolumne

Remember when UAL unveiled IPTE in 2005, it was by far the US's new benchmark. It wasn't p.s. F slated SQ spacebeds / AMR's NGBC - this was fully flat seating, in both F and C. Flyertalk was happy!

UAL unveiled it on the 767-300ER, so the business class seating in 2-2-2 didn't look so bad. And the 1-1-1 in the 6-seat F-Cabin on that plane pictured very nicely and was the nicest hard product of any legacy carrier until AMR's Flagship suite on the 777 in 2012!

Of course the 744/772 2-4-2 sort of sullied IPTE's reputation and [sister] products like the B/E Diamond seats CO launched a few years later as you noted just tracked better in general with flyers even if it had it's own shortcomings.

Point being, times change quickly and the benchmark is always moving. AMR's NGBC was once the item to beat, beat by IPTE, then by B/E Diamond, then AMR 773 Cirrus, then Super Diamond, then UA Zodiac Polaris, then Delta One Suite, etc. It's always shifting and the differences aren't as large as they used to be a decade ago...

These are long term projects and asset procurements, to order for countless widebody's of a fleet much larger than United used to be. United sort of flipped the script with the innovative Polaris Lounge concept and their US brethren are following suit. The current Zodiac Polaris assets installed are "good enough" for the next decade or so IMO especially since they'll likely add a door at some point. Yes it's more dense than DL's new product, but look at how many planes United has Polaris on, and the number of J seats....no comparison right now - United wins in hard product at current in my opinion and I think is the best positioned from a hard product front v DL/AA, who ironically are now the ones suffering from the same inconsistency that UAL flyers complained about for seemingly decades.

PTahCha

Regardless of the public's perception, this was a deliberate choice, as the United App icon has been matched with the same blue color.

Pi7473000

Did United retire "fly the friendly skies" again? The new ad campaign feels very random does not make me think of United at all.