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Review: Turkish Airlines Business Class | 777-300ER: Istanbul to Mumbai
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Inaugural Flight | United Polaris Business Class | Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City
Trip Photos: Ho Chi Minh City Day Trip
Review: Le Saigonnais Lounge Ho Chi Minh City SGN
Review: Cathay Pacific Business Class | A330-300: Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong
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Review: Cathay Pacific Business Class | 777-300ER: Hong Kong to San Francisco

YOUTUBE: Austrian Airlines: Washington DC to Vienna
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Vienna to Istanbul
YOUTUBE: Turkish Airlines: Istanbul to Mumbai
YOUTUBE: Air India Express: Pune to Bangkok
YOUTUBE: Emirates: Bangkok to Hong Kong
YOUTUBE: United Airlines: Hong Kong to Ho Chi Minh City
YOUTUBE: Cathay Pacific: Ho Chi Minh City to Hong Kong
YOUTUBE: Cathay Pacific: Hong Kong to San Francisco

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United Airlines once again returned to Ho Chi Minh City In October 2025. The flight operates as a continuation of the morning flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong. It then refuels, and carries on to Ho Chi Minh City.

I was excited to be on the inaugural flight today and let’s get right to it!

Pre-Flight

The check-in counters did not have anything special for the flight and was pretty empty but I also came pretty early. This area can get packed pretty quickly with evening flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and now Ho Chi Minh City.

I have 1K status with United so I lined up in the dedicated check in line.

Once check-in was complete, I had it over to the United club, which was now newly renovated, and has not been open since Covid

It was here that, for the first time, we saw signage signaling both inaugural flights that happened today. Earlier in the morning, there was an inaugural flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok on a 787 that flew in from Los Angeles, and this evening, We are flying the second 787 from Los Angeles, which is continuing on to Ho Chi Minh City.

There was also a cake with some fruits for the celebration.

The cake was pretty good, I enjoyed a few bites of it.

Back at the gate, there was a setup for the flight to SGN. There was a podium where different speakers would share their excitement for the new route ahead.

There was also memorabilia floating around that people used to take pictures.

Our flight deck team also showed up. They were part of the flight deck team that operated the 15+ hour flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong yesterday, and are flying our aircraft this evening onwards to Ho Chi Minh City. Standing with them is also the Vietnamese Consulate General to Hong Kong.

Speakers began their speeches shortly after. Each talked about their excitement about the route as it relates to their role and the job that role plays in the outcome of this route.

After all the speeches, it was the classic ribbon cutting ceremony.

Some staff members were also passing around sugar cookies to everyone in the waiting area.

Our 787 had arrived a while back from its long journey from LA, only to stop here and take another short hop over to Vietnam.

In Flight

Eventually we boarded and I turned left in the forward United Polaris cabin. This cabin is in a 1-2-1 layout where each row has a slightly different layout and the cabin has a variety of seating options depending on what you are looking for.

If you are traveling with a significant other, unless you both are tired of each other, this is your best option. The odd-numbered rows have seats in the middle section that are close to each other and a little further from the aisle.

The even numbered rows have seats that are a little more separated and face out into the aisle. All these seats have the usual Polaris amenities and a few things for the inaugural flight that we’ll check out in a short bit.

And my seat is over here at seat 3L, which is an odd-numbered seat tucked away from the aisle and closer to the window.

At my seat was the classic polaris bedding, amenity kit, the signature polaris teddy bear, and some inaugural goodies.

Inside the envelope was a teddy bear, a poster, a welcome note, a postcard, some stickers, and a keychain. United has a common theme they apply to all the gifts they provide on inaugural flights, and this was definitely one of them.

The menu was a special Vietnamese-themed menu.

One of the crew members came with  a tray of water and champagne and I went for the latter.

Usually, United has some kind of picture of the destination here, but given that this is a new flight, they haven’t quite figured that out yet. Not totally out of the ordinary.

We pushed back on time and began our taxi out to Runway 7R which was our departure runway.

I always love the takeoff view from Hong Kong because you get that dense collection of buildings alongside the views alongside the hills.

United has wifi on its 787s, and at this point, these are the prices. This flight is only around 2 hours and some change, so if $8 is worth it for you, then it’s all for you, but for me, I can go 2 hours with just the texting grade wifi. Eventually, this will be replaced with Starlink wifi which has been super impressive on other flights where I’ve tried it.

Once we got going, the crew brought around hot towels for everyone in Polaris.

Then it was time for the start of the service, which came with a ramekin of warm nuts, and I opted for sparkling water and champagne as my beverage.

The meal for this flight was served on one tray. Now here’s the strange part. As you saw on the menu, there’s a chicken and a tofu dish. With the forward section of the Polaris cabin having 32 seats, and this being a Hong Kong to Vietnam route, I was super surprised and disappointed to hear that they had only loaded 12 chickens. The rest were all tofu’s. It’s crazy considering the fact that, as expected, 31 out of 32 passengers had ordered chicken. I was not surprised by that at all. So a lot of people were going to be disappointed. I sure hope they fixed this for future flights.

For what its worth, I got lucky with the chicken and it was pretty damn tasty.

The side salad was fine.

The salad came with a few condiments like a vietnamese salad dressing and some other side veggies. That bread is what they labeled as Banh Mi on the menu.

The dessert was what they described as a “Vietnamese Banh flan creme caramel” and it was absolutely delicious. To be fully honest, I could not tell you what is Vietnamese about this dessert, but it was tasty.

Here’s what the tofu dish looked like. All the other sides are the same.

After some chatter with the flight deck team and the crew, we already began our descent into Ho Chi Minh City, navigating around some thunderstorms.

We touched down and had a 5 minute taxi to our gate where the usual water cannon salute for inaugural flights was ready to greet us.

Post Flight

Even though it was well past midnight, there was plenty of celebrations awaiting us on the ground.

We also had the US ambassador to Vietnam, Marc Knapper, joining us from Hanoi, and the US Consulate General here in Ho Chi Minh, Melissa Brown waiting for us to welcome this flight to Vietnam.

Hilariously enough, I don’t know Department of State members off the top of my head, so when Marc Knapper started a conversation with me, I thought he was United’s station manager for the airport or something like that. Little did I know that was the ambassador until the host introduced him.

There were more pictures with the crew, and I felt really bad for them. We were probably at 1:30am at this point, and this crew (minus the pilots) are turning around and working the flight back at 6AM. Which means this crew is getting maybe 1 or 2 hours of sleep tops. I would not want to work this flight if I were them.

Inaugural Flight After Party

Lastly, the following evening there was a private event at the Hotel Majestic in Ho Chi Minh City to celebrate all the different parties that made that flight possible.

There was a stage that was beautifully set up for the event this evening.

There were a few local performances that I was enjoying

They also had a cool video commemorating the flight and you can find that video in this linkedin post.

Our host was awesome. He was rapidly translating long vietnamese sentences into english and long english sentences into Vietnamese. I speak multiple languages fluently and even I’d have to take a second to process and convert between languages for long sentences.

Then we had a few speakers including United’s global head of sales. Marcel has been with United for more than 3 decades but he is retiring soon.

Then we got to hear from Leon Goldberg, who would be taking over Marcel’s spot.

The celebrations also included some drinks and food.

United had its signature cocktails of course, and there was another 2 bars. One of them was serving cocktails of your choice (assuming the bartender knew how to make them) and another was a wine bar. I just kept a glass of white wine on hand for the evening. There were even people coming around and keeping our glasses full which was great.

There were also lots of food items and simply because of constant chatter with people, I did not get to eat much, but it looked delicious.