The Polaris business class service on United Airlines flights is changing on May 1, 2018. The company will be removing a few of the unique service offerings it launched some 16 months ago, suggesting that the changes are as a result of customer feedback. An internal company memo outlines the details of the changes, calling attention to the improved lounge experience as part of the reason for the on board cuts.
Customers have positively received our United Polaris lounge, and this year we are opening more United Polaris lounges beginning this summer in San Francisco, Houston and New York/Newark and in the fall, Los Angeles. As we continue to add more lounges, we want to take into account the feedback that customers have given us — they’ve emphasized their desire to rest and relax during their journey, especially onboard.
The updates to the service flow will allow us to continue providing a premium product with high-quality food, wine, amenities and more, but it’ll be delivered in a more efficient way.
Among the changes:
- Pre-flight beverages will be served as pre-poured sparkling wine, orange juice and water offered from a silver tray, with other beverages available upon request
- Mid-flight snacks will no longer be proactively offered; passengers can request them when desired
- The special wine-tasting and Bloody Mary service is disappearing
- Polaris First no longer gets the soup course
Challenging the “premium” Polaris moniker
For the mid-flight snack the company says that catering levels are not being cut. At least not yet. By not proactively offering the catering it is likely that demand will shrink. Eventually this could be used to justify cutting the number of meals catered to reduce waste and cut costs. The company chose from the very beginning of the Polaris product launch to not fully stock for some on-board amenities. This creates a situation where passengers risk disappointment in not getting the advertised service. That’s a great way to kill the premium-ness of Polaris. Extending it to meals won’t help.
Similarly, killing off the wine tasting and Bloody Mary services removes the main unique offering United had.
Wines and Bloody Marys will continue to be available upon request, but the dedicated cart service will change. This was a common flight attendant suggestion for improvement. A new branded cart cover is being sourced to improve presentation in the aisle and will be available shortly after launch.
No doubt that removing that service makes things easier for the cabin crew. And it makes for a smoother service overall to all passengers; setting up the wine tasting before meals were served added extra time that could derail the service to other passengers. At the same time, it is hard to see replacing a product offering with branded cart covers as a meaningful swap to passengers.
Similar to some of our competitors, branded cart covers for both the half and full carts will be boarded for use in the aisle on both the beverage and meal tray carts. Cart covers will be available shortly after launch.
The part where the cart covers will not be available at the launch of the revised service is, bluntly, completely what one comes to expect from United at this point. The company struggles to get out of its own way more often than it should have to. Citing the success of the Polaris Lounge product – only one is open and the others are woefully late – is a specious claim. Especially when the benefits that are supposedly driving this customer choice remain unavailable to the vast majority of Polaris passengers as the new service standard launches.
The inability to execute smoothly on product changes does not help the company’s reputation. And it could use some help these days.
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What a hot mess of an airline.
I can totally see how getting food sooner is an often-expressed wish, especially on TATL flights. Not sure if killing off differentiators is the right solution though.
I don’t know when they ever pro-actively offered mid-flight snacks, other than leaving them on a cart near the galley. The hot bites were only listed on the menu—unless they consider that pro-active offering.
Quite sad that even before they have rolled a company wide product, they are already clawing back features. There was a lot of fanfare when they introduced Polaris but it seems little beyond that.
Even better: launching phantom changes to a phantom product when even those are not ready yet (cart covers).
No soup for you!
Honestly, given the trend at United lately, I am surprised the cuts didn’t go deeper. It’s clear to me that Kirby does not believe pax experience drives a revenue premium
Gotta LOL at UAL. They launch a phantom product then claw it back before it is fully implemented. I flew “Polaris” quite a bit last year. Never saw a Polaris lounge nor the supposed new hard product. The ONLY difference I experienced was the wine tasting. Now that’s gone. SO happy to be airline agnostic….
Maybe if they actually implemented something other than blankets it would have been nice…
Has United had a single launch of anything since the merger that has been executed well, and actually come close to what was promised? At the moment I’m struggling to think of something.
They have rolled out decent coffee fleet-wide. 😉
Thanks, Igor. Yes, after several failed attempts, they did finally get that one right!
I really want to give them props for something, but it’s pretty damn difficult to find something where they deserve it.
I think Illy rollout was the first post-merger announced coffee change. Other changes were .. um .. sneaky cost cutting measures.
Haha. There was a switch to which Fresh Brew blend they were using before Illy came along. Supposedly they tasted again before that one, but nobody really believed that.
I think CO used FreshBrew prior to merger, so it was more like SHARES and Jeff Smisek … old baggage rather than a new selection. 😉
I think CO used FreshBrew prior to merger, so it was more like SHARES and Jeff Smisek … old baggage rather than a new selection. 😉
CO did, and the original merger coffee was the blend CO was using. They ran a round of taste tasting to change it around 2013, after all the complaints, and rolled out a different Fresh Brew roast, which was only slightly better. Then they went to Illy after that one failed. They didn’t end up at Illy the first time they went out to bid on coffee after the merger of on board service and branding.
Post-merger UA’s FreshBrew wasn’t the same as CO’s FreshBrew, really? UA used Sbux pre-merger, and they did run a bake off, in the same manner as they ran a bake-off between Shares and Apollo.
That’s how I remember it, anyway. 😉
Yep. They picked Fresh Brew for post-merger, using the same thing CO had, then did had Fresh Brew change it a year or so later, then finally went back out to bid again.
Here’s the FT post from 2012 when they revised what they were getting from Fresh Brew after the original version was so awful nobody would drink it. This one was slightly less disgusting.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/1309845-united-s-onboard-coffee-fresh-brew-kova-reviews-questions-etc.html
Steven Sullivan Timothy’s was still the best.
That sCO (or whatever) that replaced bux was *disgusting*. Worse than sNW m90 coffee out of those red jugs even today.
We’ll get ready….many, many new things starting before they even finish one old thing.
The top should look at the bottoms saying, STOP, DROP, AND REVIEW before they continue to roll out new things