Review: United Polaris Lounge San Francisco SFO
Review: United 777-200ER Polaris Business Class San Francisco SFO to Paris CDG
Review: Turkish Airlines A330-300 Economy Class Paris CDG to Istanbul IST
Review: Pegasus Airlines A320-200 Economy Class Istanbul SAW to Kayseri ASR
Trip Photos: A Week in Istanbul and Cappadocia
Review: Turkish A321-200 Economy Class Nevsehir NAV to Istanbul IST
Review: Turkish Airlines Business Class Lounge Istanbul IST
Review: Turkish Airlines 777-300ER Business Class Istanbul IST to Chicago ORD
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: San Francisco (SFO) to Paris (CDG)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Paris (CDG) to Istanbul (IST)
YOUTUBE: Pegasus Airlines: Istanbul (SAW) to Kayseri (ASR)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Nevsehir (NAV) to Istanbul (IST)
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Istanbul to Chicago (ORD)
After spending a few hours in United’s fantastic Polaris lounge here in SFO, it was off to my flight to Paris.
As a polaris business class passenger, you will most likely board in group 1. However if you have United Global services or 1K status, then you get to pre-board.
Boarding was a little bit delayed, but eventually we began boarding with the pre-boarding groups. I happen to have 1K status with United so I boarded at that time.
SFO-CDG
Boeing 777-200ER
28 April 2023
Polaris passengers boarded through the forward door and turned right towards their respective seats.
I had seat 6L at the time. This one is an even numbered seat, and NOT one of the seats you’d want to have. I figured this would serve as a useful review since everyone knows at this point that the even numbered seats are far superior. However sometimes life doesn’t work out and you get an even numbered seat.
With every polaris flight, you can be sure you’ll always be overloaded with amenities. We’ll go deeper into each of these but for now, let’s take a quick overview.
You get an amenity kit, a mattress topper, a blanket, and a duvet. As far as business class goes, in my opinion, United’s polaris bedding is as good as it gets.
Now the seat never has enough storage for all of these items, so I always store whatever I don’t immediately need in the overhead bin as it helps create more space around my seat.
The other issue with the even numbered seats is that you most likely will have a misaligned window. In my particular case, it’s not the greatest, but it’s not awful either. There are some even-numbered seats where the window is completely misaligned, and then there are some other rows where the window is perfectly aligned (row 10 on the 777-200) as far as even-numbered seats go.
Every seat has a pretty sizable screen and it’s honestly pretty responsive compared to the inflight entertainment of a lot of other carriers. To the right of the screen is a coat hook, and right below the screen is a mini-storage space sufficient for tablets and phones. And, not to be missed, there is a USB port just to the right of the storage.
Right below that is the tray table (which we’ll look at later) and the foot cubby where your feet can be stored during the flight. This also becomes a part of the bed when you go into bed mode. You are angled towards the aisle so it’s not as private as the odd-numbered seats, but it is still comfortable. The foot space can be a little bit tight if you have larger feet but I’m 5′ 10″ and have US foot size 10 so it was still comfortable enough for me.
On your side, you’ll find the signature Polaris seat controls. These include a do-not-disturb sign, a setting to recline the seat or flat-bed it directly, and a pretty neat way to control the lumbar support.
Here’s a look at the counter space that you have for these seats. I will say the layout is a little more restrictive than the odd-numbered seats for movement, however the counter space is about the same. But if you place items on the counter, due to the angle of the seat, you have to turn your body a little more to retrieve items.
At every seat was a water bottle for each passenger.
Behind your seat is a storage compartment and an adjustable reading light.
To open and close the storage compartment, push the door. It will open, and inside, you’ll find storage and the headphones you can use for the flight.
Below the storage compartment you’ll find the headphone prong along with a USB port and a charging port. So in total, in terms of charging, there is one power port and 2 USB ports per seat. I think in this day and age if United could take one of those USB-A ports and turn it into a USB-C port, that would be absolutely killer in terms of utility.
There’s also an old style classic 777-standard remote and really the only thing I use this for is the overhead light. Almost everything else you’d need on this remote can be controlled from the screen directly.
The menu was also already at our seat at the time of boarding.
While boarding, the crew came around to take menu orders for our flight. The purser Brian came and personally greeted me and thanked me for being a 1K member which was a nice touch. He similarly greeted the other 1K and Global Services members in the cabin. He told us our flight time would be 10 hours and 19 minutes to Paris.
At this point, we were stuck on the ground. During the pre-flight inspection, the first officer discovered a sizable hydraulic fluid leak in the main gears. So the engineers were working on patching that up, but as someone who flies planes, let me tell you, any plane with a hydraulic fluid leak is 1,000% unairworthy.
Initially they kept us in the plane for a while, but once it was apparent that this would take longer than anticipated, they let us get out of the plane.
We couldn’t exit back into the main terminal area since we had boarded an international flight, so the doors back to the boarding area stayed closed. However, there was a lot of walking space in the room immediately before the jetways, so we were allowed to wonder around there for a while.
The crew also brought around drinks at this time. At this point I was starving since I really didn’t eat much in the polaris lounge either as I had a lot of work to get done before boarding so I was locked in. The crew kindly brought me a few pretzels from the back which was just enough to keep me satisfied for a bit.
Let me put into perspective how late we were: our flight was supposed to leave at 2:40pm and this Turkish Airlines below doesn’t arrive into SFO until about 530/6pm.
Finally we got an all green light from one of the chief maintenance engineers that they sealed the leak and the flight deck team did another walk around and made sure all was well. We had a swift taxi to runway 28L and took off with a slow and gradual climb out.
Despite the 3 hour delay, it was a beautiful day in the bay, which made for great views.
Shortly after the crew were able to get up and begin prepping the cabin for service, one of the crew came around with hot towels. I was always a cold towel person so I always open up the towel and wave it around as I watch the heat rapidly escape from the towel. It’s pretty cool to see.
The amenity kit was well stocked and in a cute away bag design. I feel like every time I’m in polaris the amenity kit design is new, but at least here is what it was for this particular flight. There was a facial cream kit, socks, a pen, eye shades, and earplugs. Now on flights longer than 14 hours you can request pajamas as well and they are excellent on United. Unfortunately this flight is far below the threshold so that wasn’t an option today.
The inflight entertainment will give you an overview of the meal plan for the flight when you fire it up. I have to give United credit, tall their in flight entertainment systems on their long haul planes are very responsive and easy to use. There are other airlines with better in flight entertainments but the lag is sometimes unbearable, which was quite the opposite here.
The crew also came around with the drink trolley for the first round of service that also had warm nuts. A trolley in business class isn’t very elegant or personable from a service standpoint, but I don’t care much and it gets the job done. The crew were all awesome for this flight so that’s all that mattered.
I went with champagne for my drink and the crew also offered me sparkling or still water and I went with the former. The champagne on pour today was Heidsick Monopole Brut which was perfectly alright.
The crew came around with meal service shortly after. One change that was made for Polaris service after the pandemic was that both the appetizer and main course were served on the same tray. It used to be the case that appetizers were served first, then main course.
I prefer this approach because it allows you to enjoy your appetizer peacefully and your main course piping hot. But here it feels like you have to hound down your appetizers so that the main course doesn’t get cold, or that you eat them all simultaneously.
These salads make their way onto every United flight and they aren’t all that great, but I will never say no to vegetables. They also come with a dressing, usually balsamic vinaigrette.
The ginger beef was a cold appetizer. I couldn’t really taste the ginger, but the beef itself was alright.
For the main course I went with the chicken, which was decent and well heated. It was really easy to cut through. The fries were decent too and were soaking up all the sauce. The grilled shallots were also pretty good. All of this was sitting in a sauce that was pretty good, so the main dish was overall decent. I should put it out there I don’t have terribly high standard when it comes to meals on United, so this isn’t some Michelin star main course, but it was good for what it was.
The crew also came around with a bread basket and I took pretzel bread and garlic bread. The pretzel roll was lukewarm but still quite good and the garlic bread was warm and soft.
Eventually the crew collected my tray and it was time for United’s signature Polaris sundae cart.
United’s Dessert card comes with ice cream’s portioned out and toppings you can addon like chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, cherries, chocolate chips, whipped cream, and other such toppings. There’s also a cheese plate, and whatever 3rd dessert option United always has on their Polaris flights.
I opted for a sundae and a cheese plate.
The sundae had scoop of Vanilla ice cream with whipped cream, chocolate fudge, chocolate chips, and caramel sauce.
It was delectable, and the cheese plate was a nice, savory complement.
What I always recommend to everyone is if you want to try multiple desserts but you are too full, just get the ice cream sundae. The remaining cheese plates and 3rd dessert option become a part of the mid flight snack setup so you can always have those then however the ice cream sundae is only taken out after the first meal service.
The views were nice as the sun was setting on our way to Paris.
Let’s go over the wifi real quick. United does offer wifi and I find their rates to be quite reasonable most of the times and the speed is pretty solid.
Every passenger can text for free on basic messaging apps.
Here’s what the paid options look like. The full flight price is $21, which is pretty solid if I’m going to use it for a decent portion of the flight. For the overnight flights, I’d say I’m less inclined to spend that out of my own pocket since I’d spend a lot more time sleeping. For westbound flights, this is a great price.
At this point I went to the lavatory to give you guys a quick look of the amenities. The lav itself is quite basic, but there are some creams and facial sprays. United Polaris does have Pj’s for passengers, but only on flights that are 14 hours or longer, so this flight didn’t qualify.
Pictures are cool, but for this one, I thought I’d show videos. As I showed earlier, the seat controls to your side are very intuitive and you can easily get your bed into flat bed position.
Throughout the flight, the crew were very good about bringing water around. It may not feel like it, but flights are dehydrating, so I always take on the chance to drink water if I can when crew are sleeping.
After getting a solid 5 hours of sleep I woke up to the start of breakfast service. The crew came around and offered hot towels to everyone once again.
The views were nice outside as we made our way over some clouds.
It’s breakfast time! The crew came around and asked which breakfast menu item we wanted. I went with the baked egg option. Everything was served on one tray, as is often the case with the pre-arrival meal.
The eggs themselves weren’t too flavorful but salt and pepper are always provided to compensate for things like this. The mushrooms were decent.
The fruits were delightful and consisted of a mix of watermelons, pineapple, smaller chunks of honeydew, blueberries, and some mint. This is everything I could’ve asked for in a fruit plate.
I generally don’t ever have the flavored chobani yogurts since they are full of added sugar so I didn’t try this one, but I’d expect it to be no different than the regular chobani’s you get on the ground.
There was a croissant as well and it was warm and soft. However it was also soggy from being reheated directly in the bag where it’s packaged. United never fails to absolutely eviscerate their croisssants before serving them to passengers. Considering we are going to France, I’m sure plenty of people on the flight loved that.
At this point we had crossed over into France and were making our way speedily towards Paris.
I asked for some hot water a little after the meal and the crew happily brought it out.
Eventually we began our descent into Paris CDG. We entered the pattern and got some good views of CDG as well.
The purser Brian came and gave me a handwritten note thanking me for flying and for loyalty. It’s small touches like these that make the differences and this crew was great,
It’s no secret United’s crew can be consistently inconsistent but I definitely had a great bunch on this flight.
We descended through the clouds and it was just and CDG with nothing else in between,
We eventually touched down and taxiied over to Terminal 1.
United is no Qatar Airways or Emirates or anything like that. But it gets the job done and it does it well. The seats are private enough, and even with the even numbered, less private seats I had, they were still very good. The bedding is, in my opinion, the best bedding in business class and you truly are going to get good sleep. When United launched Polaris in 2016, it was all about the quality of sleep and they have held that up to this day. The food will always be a hit or miss and this flight was no exception, but at least there is sufficiently nutritious food. So overall, United is a fine way to fly across the Atlantic ocean and gets the job done nicely.