I know it has been long overdue, but I finally got a chance to check out a recent international flight opportunity on United and see how it compares to all the competitors!

Most people take the international flights for United out of SFO and you need to take the long 15 minutes walk to the G gates…but it actually felt good after a few hours on a domestic flight.

Of course you can check out the duty free shops…but do you really save any serious money outside of sales tax?

Or head into the airline lounge. I went into check out the Polaris lounge.

It is pretty popular as you can see, but it does not feel loud or crowded.

And the bathrooms are not crowded, they are all huge personal spaces which was nice.

How about food? You have two choices. The standards entree bar which is quite nice, or…

The dining room which has menu and table service. Very similar to the Virgin Atlantic lounge in Heathrow airport.

The portions are small, but they do have large flavor.

It is amazing on how fast they can serve perfect temperature, delicious dishes and meet your needs in less than 30 minutes.

Now as the lounge fills up with everyone waiting for the midnight international flights, the challenge is getting one of these choice lounge compartments…it is like the fight for pool lounges and umbrellas at summer resorts!

The gate seems very chaotic but with the electronic scanning it boards quickly and you get to check out your seat. I was trying to figure out why there were so many extra pillows and blankets. They gave even more than this and I had to put them up with the luggage!

How was the food? Well…the flight attendant ran back and forth 4 times and kept asking what was my appetizer choice…I knew things were not going well from there.  Overall, it was OK, but certainly not world class.

The media choices and performance of the entertainment system was great, but the headphones were a cheap disappointment for sure.  You had to crank up the volume to hear anything over the engines.

The small consolation prize is they do give you some pajamas if you ask.

They were comfy, I may actually keep them at take them home!

And then after 15 hours of flying, we had to wait for 30 minutes to find room for us at the gate like the Qantas A380

If you would like to see of my other airline reviews, check out my consolidated page: https://davidcrosstravels.com/airline-reviews/