Omicron-era Trip Report: United Polaris Business SFO-ICN-PVG Boeing 777-300ER
After a nice stay in the Polaris Lounge, it was off to board my flight to Shanghai. This was a very special flight, because it was the first one in a month to take off from San Francisco. China has a policy where basically if 5 or more passengers test positive within the 7 days after arrival in China, that flight must be suspended for 2 weeks. And the more passengers that test positive, the longer the suspension. Because of the Omicron wave that rocketed skywards in late December and into January, almost all of the flights from US to China were cancelled from mid-January to mid-February.
The last UA857 SFO-ICN-PVG to operate was January 16. I had booked the February 12 flight on January 7, and soon after I booked it, it was completely sold out. I had even been contemplating to fly out February 11, to give myself maybe one more day in Shanghai before starting remote work! But had I booked a day earlier, or a day later, my flight would have been cancelled. And the rebooking options were slim: in one of my WeChat groups, people were saying that they were rebooked to a flight at the end of March!
When I booked my flight, I was even contemplating booking Premium Plus, and then upgrading to Polaris Business Class with PlusPoints. Thankfully I just booked Polaris Business straightaway, because it sold out immediately afterwards. Future dates showed that Polaris Business was as high as $18,000. In comparison, my $9,500 one-way ticket was a big bargain.
Of course, it’s still not cheap for a one-way flight. In fact, I think besides the Prius I bought when I started my new job after college, I don’t think I’ve made any purchase as big! The math these days for making travel purchases is just so different than pre-COVID times. If I want to take off my mask and eat during this long flight, I do feel a bit safer to be surrounded by the walls of the Polaris seat. And this was a very long flight - including the stop in Incheon where we stay in our seats - and the extra comfort would be worth it.
The flight was, of course, completely full. I heard in my WeChat group that the flight was even oversold by two passengers, which would be a horrible situation for those people, if true.
I did notice that no one was wearing a hazmat suit on my flight, and a few people were wearing only a surgical mask, too.
One of the benefits of buying business class early, rather than hoping for an upgrade right before departure, is being able to have a range of seats to choose from. On my last flight PVG-ICN-SFO in December, I upgraded from Premium Plus and my upgrade only cleared at the gate. I was assigned a seat on the side, but it was the type that was closer to the aisle, and didn’t even have a sliver of a window. This time, I could select a seat right next to the window, with a little pathway to the aisle. And I had three whole windows, all for myself! This was true luxury.
We had beautiful views of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin, and East Bay after takeoff. San Francisco is so… square! One can see how much of the land it’s built on is man-made.
Just a beautiful day for flying.
This was an upgrade from COVID-era meal service. Warm nuts in a porcelain ramekin, with beverage in a glass. When I flew SFO-ICN-PVG in December 2020, the nuts were in a small plastic container like what you put ketchup in, the beverages were served in plastic cups, and everything was served on the same tray as the main meal service. I also wanted to try the AHA sparkling water with orange and grapefruit flavors. It was pretty good.
United still does not print out menus, so when the flight attendant offered up “beef short rib, salmon, or tube pasta,” I asked if he could say something more about the beef and salmon, like what kind of sauces they came with. He said the beef had a kind of red wine sauce, and the salmon had a cream sauce. I had had a few different versions of United salmon before, and the one with a cream sauce I think is quite bland. So I went for the beef.
The beef came with what looked like mustard grain mashed potatoes, and roasted carrots and parsnips, which had great flavor and maintained a nice bite.
The beef was fork-tender, which I liked. Sometimes United’s beef short rib is cooked like a steak, while sometimes it’s braised, so I’m never sure what I’m going to get. There were big fat pieces that I had to take off, though. And the sauce was a kind of Asian-ish sauce, like with a hoisin flavor, and it was sweet with what looked like little berries. Oh how I wish we had menus!
The salad was pretty good - crisp napa cabbage, purple cabbage, carrots, and mango. This came with a sesame ginger dressing.
A pretzel roll - my favorite! - was heated inside of its bag.
For dessert, we had the mango sorbet, which Economy Class usually gets, too. People complain on Flyertalk that putting it on the tray when the main meal is served means that it’s melted by the time one gets around to it. In my case, on this flight, it was still very frozen when I ate it. I quite like the mango sorbet, and because it was so frozen, I could just shave off little layers off the top to slowly savor it.
On this flight, I watched Dune, Pretty Woman (had never seen it before!), and finished up the last hour of Avengers: Endgame, but I also slept because I was so tired. In the middle of the flight, I went looking for snacks. Besides a sandwich, there were only packaged snacks like Cheez-Its, gummy bears, and kettle potato chips (so good). The sandwich was just the tiniest thing. You can see that it’s smaller than the fun-size gummy bear package.
And there was just a tiny bit of Swiss cheese inside. Nothing else. A very dry sandwich! I was so hungry, but didn’t want to eat another one of these. Pre-pandemic there would have been hot grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and something else like fried rice on offer for mid-flight snacks.
About an hour before landing at around 8:20pm San Francisco time, or 1:20pm Seoul Time, we were served “breakfast.” There was a choice between eggs and oatmeal. I had heard the oatmeal was very good, but I chose the eggs because I really wanted some protein after all of those potato chips (ended up having two bags of these!) and Cheez-Its earlier.
The eggs were very good! They were egg white bites, very savory and with a silky texture. They were served topped with a red pepper sauce, and accompanied by roasted potatoes, tomato, and chicken sausage. This was an excellent, very satisfying entrée.
The fruit was also very good, with orange, honeydew, pineapple, watermelon, and blueberries.
There was a warmed croissant that was served directly on the tray. I ate this with my sausage. Besides this there was also a Chobani blended strawberry yogurt (so glad it’s Chobani and not that horribly sweet and unnatural Upstate Farms yogurt that I’d had many times before), and I also ordered tomato juice, which is my go-to when I’m hungry and want something more filling. I think of it like gazpacho.
As satisfying as the breakfast was, I had a worry. It was about 12:30pm Shanghai Time. I knew based on my experience last year, that we’d land in Incheon, wait on the plane for an hour or hour and a half, then fly to Shanghai with no meal service on that segment. Then after landing at 5pm Shanghai Time, we’d have the whole arrivals process of taking PCR tests, and immigration, and then waiting at the district desk for hotel assignment. That district desk part could be hours. And then we’d take a bus from Pudong Airport into the city, and then do the whole quarantine hotel check-in process which also could be slow given that you’re arriving with a whole busload of people.
I figured that this would be the last time I would eat, for the next 11 hours! (And when I check my records now, it was 10:05pm when I got to my room in the quarantine hotel, so my estimate wasn’t too far off.)
So I did something I’d never done before. I asked the flight attendant if he had any of the oatmeals left. He happily said yes, and brought it to me! Maybe someone had refused the meal service and they had some remaining, which would need to be tossed eventually.
The oatmeal was excellent! It was very cinnamon-y, with big slices of apple in it, and topped with a kind of granola with pumpkin seeds and dried cranberries. I’ve read some description of this as “Horchata steel cut oatmeal with agave apples.” That horchata part may explain why, besides the cinnamon part, it tasted very creamy! This was a very comforting dish, with lots of interesting textures, and just lightly sweet which I really appreciated. I’d happily eat this again, whether in the air or on the ground.
Landing in Incheon. Such a different scene! Such haze! And an even more rectangular land mass than San Francisco.
It was sobering to pass by so many Korean Air jets, many of them Airbus A380s, taped up because they’re out of use.
Same thing with Asiana Airlines.
By the way, I love the little stone-look slab next to the Polaris seats to put things on, and the cubby is great for storing my hand sanitizer and Vaseline, and my many bottles of water, for landing and then takeoff again.
Before the 1 hr 43 minute flight from Incheon to Shanghai, the captain and flight attendants all warned us that we’d be expecting a lot of turbulence in flight, so they would “try” to do the beverage service.
In my section at least, we did get beverage service. I tried the other flavor of Aha sparkling water that they had, the blueberry and pomegranate flavor. I think I liked the citrus one better.
Finally touch down in Shanghai!
Here’s a funny scene. These hazmat-suited workers lined up to get their picture taken by the hazmat-suited guy opposite from them. Was it their first day on the job? Their last? They looked like they were commemorating something!
After landing, we were instructed to stay in our seats. They said that deplaning would be conducted by pandemic officials, and there will be no United ground staff available for assistance. After half an hour, they made another announcement saying that health officials deplane each flight one by one, and we were just waiting our turn. Being in business class, I actually don’t mind this procedure! I would prefer to sit in my comfy seat, than stand in line in the airport with my backpack and messenger bag weighing me down.
In total, we waited for 40 minutes before Polaris business class could deplane. So from boarding to deplaning, I was in my seat for more than 17 hours! I was so glad I sprung for business class.
And I felt so fortunate to have booked the February 12 flight. You can see that the last time this flight operated was January 16! Omicron-era travel is strange indeed.
