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British Airways and Lufthansa have been charging Business Class users to pick their seats for a while now, so we knew it was only a matter of time before United's management flipped out that they were "leaving money on the table" and followed suit.  Plenty of sites are covering this latest enshittifcation , but long story short,  the new "Base" Polaris: includes 1 free checked bag instead of 2 requires you to pay to choose your seat has no ability to upgrade to the new Polaris Suite has United Club access, but no Polaris lounge access has no free ticket changes or refunds available We all know that this isn't going to magically create a cheap Polaris seat for those types who "just want a bed in the sky and don't want any of that other fancy stuff." While that's how this un-bundling is always presented -- "we're providing choices!" -- the reality is that the crappy new product will have the old price and you'll have to pay ...

So odd that on the very same day the United's CEO said he never eats the food on a long flight (because " hyyyyyydraaaation and sleeeeeeep ") they also announce a partnership with Chef's Table to bring legendary chefs' cooking to Polaris .  Of course my former-Californian soul jumped for joy when it heard the name Nancy Silverton, but then I remembered the old Anthony Bourdain quote " There's almost never a good reason to eat on a plane… Much better to show up in a new place and be hungry and eat at even a little street stall than arrive gassy and bloated, full, flatulent, hungover." And while I generally agree with that, ANA First exists as proof it can be done.  This has been tried  many times before , both in the 'celebrity chef as airline chef' format and in the 'we'll bring you a Shake Shack burger in the sky' format. I'm absolutely convinced that Nancy and her peers could design something delicious for in-flight dini...

United announced some major updates to Polaris Business Class yesterday and it's crazy to think this blog has been around long enough to have my thoughts on Polaris ' birth nearly 10 years ago. Re-reading that post makes the launch of this new seat seem fairly trivial in comparison to that: the branding, the service, the lounges are all up and running now. Other than the door, the difference between the new seat and the old seat is fairly small - a lot smaller than the difference between the first Polaris seat and the Business Class seats that preceded it.  LOL a worker at the BK Navy Yard leaked the big Polaris reveal 24 hours early So yes, they're going to roll out an off-the-shelf seat (with doors!) that's been in use by Qatar and Hawaiian for a while now. A seasonal flavor will get added to the ice cream sundae cart. There'll be a new self-serve snack area. A bunch of the middle seats will have double-bed features ( including a shared mattress pad ). The new p...

UPDATE (Aug 2023): United finished installing Polaris on all of its long haul planes this week. Given the pandemic and all, I'm going to refrain from any saucey comments other than pointing out that this post is from 2017.  UPDATE (Aug 2019): United is now claiming that half of their widebody planes will have the updated seats by the end of 2019. For anyone keeping score at home, that's 3 years to get to HALF. While the Polaris lounge situation did get better in 2019, most of the soft product is, in fact, still dead. UPDATE (Mar 2018): Polaris is basically dead . Honestly, I'm sad I was right about this. As time has marched on I think we're seeing an answer to my final paragraph in this story: the future of international travel is looking a lot more like Spirit or Ryanair and less like ANA or Emirates. UPDATE (Feb 2018): I put down these thoughts a year ago about United Polaris. One Mile At A Time just posted an update on United Polaris ...