United Polaris Lounge Expansion News and New American Flagship Lounge Opening Coming

Airlines sometimes miss that the key question for a lounge isn’t “are there enough seats for passengers?” but “is there enough space and enough empty seats so the lounge doesn’t feel full?”

If a lounge feels just as packed as the gate area, it isn’t a peaceful escape from the terminal. I’ve been to too many lounges that feel like refugee camps during peak times. You have to hunt for a place to sit. Staff can’t keep up with the turnover and trash piles up. Food and drink go unreplenished.

It isn’t just about the fact that there is a lounge, or what services that lounge offers. A premium cabin lounge should feel exclusive and peaceful.

Frequently I take Yogi Berra’s somewhat apocryphal advice that “it’s too crowded nobody goes there” and I just skip the lounge.

When I visited United’s Chicago O’Hare Polaris lounge in February I thought it was shockingly lovely. The design gorgeous, the features rich, and the food good.

Ultimately my reaction to the lounge was, this is United?? It’s gorgeous and it’s well-provisioned, with services you’d expect in a very nice international airline’s lounge but not so much from a domestic carrier.

However I also said, “I’d enjoy it the most midday rather than during peak afternoon transatlantic departure times, just because I really enjoy a lounge that isn’t overwhelmed with people and it certainly can fill up.”

United claimed at the time to me “that guests haven’t actually ever exceeded lounge capacity” yet I still worried “about people overrunning the lounge at peak European departure times.”

Indeed United is effectively acknowledging the issue because they’re expanding the lounge.

[T]he space devoted to the lounge in Concourse C of Terminal 1 at O’Hare is proving too small to adequately handle the crush of Polaris-ticketed passengers seeking to use the lounge during peak international flight departure times in the early morning and late afternoon. …

Consequently, to deal with the Polaris lounge overcrowding, the airline has decided to expand the Polaris lounge’s footprint by taking over a portion of the Concourse C United Club located immediately adjacent to the Polaris lounge.

The Chicago Business Journal also notes:

  • The Polaris lounge expansion should be completed by the end of the year.

  • The renovated O’hare C16 United Club should open “in early 2018”

  • But since the Polaris lounge will encroach on the C16 club’s space, it’s likely to shift the crowding to the paid club side.

  • The San Francisco and Newark Polaris lounges should open “by year’s end.”

  • American’s Chicago O’Hare Flagship lounge will be 17,000 square feet (versus 15,000 for the current Polaris lounge, and American’s lounge should serve fewer passengers) and may open as soon as September.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Which lounge will serve more passengers, AA or UA? AA’s is bigger and UA has the larger international presence, but I was under the impression AA lets all elites flying internationally into the Flagship lounge (regardless of cabin) so it could end up being more crowded. I could be wrong on access rules though.

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