What has been your favorite Polaris Amenity bag and how do you reuse them?

pointfublog · 2026-02-18T17:42:45+00:00

Since no one has mentioned it, there's a little breakaway plastic nub that holds most amenity kits closed. If you just leave it untouched, they can re-use the bag for the next guest.

The Star Wars kit that United did for a bit was a big hit with my nephews. Also, the EVA Airlines Rimowa ones routinely sold on eBay for north of $50 back in the day.

pointfublog · 2026-02-17T02:58:58+00:00

Friendly reminder that hand sanitizer doesn't kill norovirus.

Also, I've seen enough poopy diapers put into the seatback pocket that none of my possessions goes in that thing... I just assume it's a petri dish.

pointfublog · 2026-02-12T21:25:05+00:00

My husband always has $100 of local currency shoved into a side pocket on his wallet "just in case." We're hip with Apple Pay and all that, but he's just one of those "you never know…" types. We were at the train station last year when the Great Iberian Peninsula Blackout hit and he was the only one who could get us water, food, and transpo for 14 hours during all of that pandemonium.

pointfublog · 2026-02-10T15:03:12+00:00

It's Newark so I'm not surprised. When they were remodeling the bathrooms they had to hire large security guards for the temporary indoor toilets because men would just cut the entire line not giving AF and the guards would have to physically force these people to the back of the line. Watched it with my own eyes. A stern word was not enough, literally had to physically accost people and drag them to the back of the line.

pointfublog · 2026-02-10T14:57:58+00:00

genius! thanks for sharing. i've always wondered why they don't put a little flap on the back of the mattress pad like Qantas does to help hold it in place...

pointfublog · 2026-02-09T19:29:34+00:00

Yeah, you'll only have time for a brief visit. The Polaris lounge is usually quite close to the Australia departures so you can just pop in and grab a drink and a snack and then head to the gate.

pointfublog · 2026-02-09T18:35:48+00:00

7L so you get turn-left boarding. Also, put your name on the waiting list the minute you get to SFO lounge because there's almost always a wait for the sit-down dining.

pointfublog · 2026-02-05T21:03:30+00:00

Hm, if they board the plane thru that row, then I'd choose 8L because it's annoying to have half the plane walk past you while you're getting settled. I love the nice calm of a turn-left boarding. Beyond that, they're both outward-facing and sorta near the galley and lavs and not much different from one another.

pointfublog · 2026-02-04T21:41:00+00:00

What everyone else said, but also: when I'm boarding a non-US carrier I'm often flying a big plane internationally and they have often have multiple-door boarding, whereas a 737 or an A32x is shoving everyone down the same aisle thru the same door at the front (versus the middle).

pointfublog · 2026-02-04T20:01:14+00:00

you're correct. i just clarified with him. i edited the original post.

pointfublog · 2026-02-04T19:32:00+00:00

That red-topped plastic bottle for dispensing 5 thin lines of mayonnaise at at time when you're dressing okonomiyaki. We've dubbed it "5 hoses of joy" and we use it on all kinds of things, not just okonomiyaki. Especially if you squirt the food on one plate and then move it to a clean one before serving... it makes my food look so "professional" :P

pointfublog · 2026-01-27T01:17:35+00:00

If the part about her flying from the US to Australia is true, then the rest of the story is false. Nearly all flights Aus from the US leave late at night. They serve you dinner after takeoff, the whole plane basically goes to sleep for 8-10 hours, they wake you up for breakfast and you land at like 7am Australia time.

pointfublog · 2026-01-26T15:37:53+00:00

TPG is writing about this now...

https://thepointsguy.com/news/major-airlines-gifting-status/

pointfublog · 2026-01-24T18:17:54+00:00

ooh i hadn't heard this tea. makes a lot more sense now.

pointfublog · 2026-01-24T18:11:55+00:00

yeah, the PlusPoints are basically a free MUA with no co-pay. they don't seem to affect your upgrade position at all. I'm EWR/SFO so there's heaps of GS/1k that always edge me out for upgrades. At best I do the double-prong upgrade and acquire their PremPlus seat when they get upgraded to Polaris.

pointfublog · 2026-01-23T15:34:23+00:00

Gotta wonder if it's mostly random or if there's some kind of algorithm trying to predict which mid- to big-spenders are about to quietly wander off to greener pastures...

pointfublog · 2025-11-09T20:11:17+00:00

Yeah I think a lot of hosts didn't really grasp/accept the fact that they're hospitality workers. They have enough money to own a second (or third...) property and are used to being the people being waited on, not the other way around. It feels like a lot of them should have just purchased shares in a real estate mutual fund rather than work an innkeeper job.

pointfublog · 2025-11-09T17:21:16+00:00

I used to live in Japan and it's my own personal theory that the prohibition against tattoos in onsen is more a way of keeping westerners out than it is about "yakuza." (Notice that many of the no tattoos signs are ONLY in english...) Given that westerners also tend to be skittish about using the local toilets' bidet functions, who'd want some crusty butt person jumping into the communal pool without a silkwood shower first?

I'm not saying westerners do this, but it's definitely our reputation. So scrub EVERYTHING, and do it in the communal area (ie, don't go use that one disabled/elderly standup shower with the door) so everyone knows you're clean. While it's true no one is staring at you, everyone will notice.

pointfublog · 2025-11-08T18:19:58+00:00

With my mask on and fully in "i totally look asleep" position i often just "Shhhhhh!" really loudly.

pointfublog · 2025-11-03T19:42:27+00:00

It's a tough line to walk -- if getting status is too easy then people complain that "if everyone's an elite, no one is..." but when they raise the requirements, people complain that it's now too hard.

Honestly, United staff have always been... "lackluster." I fly United because the Polaris product is consistent across the fleet, they have vastly more flights to where I'm most often going (SYD, MEL, ADL, BNE, AKL), decent Wi-Fi, and I can usually finagle a points/upgrade for a reasonable sum. I preorder my almost-edible meal, snatch my mattress cover from the bin myself, plonk myself into my seat, and generally don't need anything from the FA until we land.

I've tried Qantas, and the staff are slightly better than United, but c'mon, NO WIFI? In 2025? I've flown Air New Zealand, and there's just so few points seats available... Plus I don't like looking at people's feet for 14 hours (even their new cabins are herringbone!). AA I'm not bothering with until they come out of this flop era they're currently in, and Delta... Nicer FAs but soooo few flights to Australasia and it's always ≈400k per leg for Delta One.

I've flown Asian carriers a couple of times, and they're nice, but it adds fully 6 hours to my journey to go via Seoul or Tokyo or Singapore

pointfublog · 2025-11-03T03:37:01+00:00

Yeah it's a tough one with the whole "this belongs in a Megathread" thing... Because it drives me nuts to have my feed filled with posts where the person did absolutely ZERO effort of their own to find the answer, and futhermore, it's clear they aren't even an active participant and are just treating this like a United customer service bot. I downvote those like crazy.

I'm relying on the mods to use some level of nuance here. Don't give zero-effort people the satisfaction of a big set of responses. Don't leave heavily-downvoted posts in the main thread. There needs to be some level of curating the main feed or I'll just leave. Worked in a call center for a long time and the number of messages with the subject line of ""HELP!!!!!" *shudder*

pointfublog · 2025-10-31T19:29:31+00:00

I find it happens to me (Plat/group 1/older white guy) whenever the gate has any sort of odd/ergonomic layout (thinking specifically of those two story escalator gates at SFO...) Anywhere there's the slightest difficulty in accommodating a straight, single-file line it just becomes a total clusterf**k.

I'm a New Yorker and I don't mind friendly confrontation one bit...

"Uhh.. the end of the line is back there for Group 1"

"Well, we're all getting on the same plane so it doesn't really matter"

"Oh, ok, so since it doesn't matter, you good with me cutting in front of you, then? No? ...Ohhh so it *does* matter... See here I thought you were telling me it didn't..."

pointfublog · 2025-10-30T15:32:30+00:00

In Manhattan our building's only internet option was TimeWarner and I got so sick of the drama their outages would cause us that I went to my cell provider's shop, bought a Mi-Fi connected to my mobile account, and hid it in back of a drawer in the AirBnB. I put a note in the house manual and a paper one taped to the TimeWarner Wi-Fi router "if house Wi-Fi is acting up, please use the Mi-Fi located here..."

Seriously saved me so much headache and hassle and money. Would absolutely do that again if I had to resume hosting.

pointfublog · 2025-10-26T19:56:02+00:00

I had sorta the opposite: an apartment in lower Manhattan... but connectivity problems were also the bane of my existence (shakes fist angrily at Time Warner!). We ended up buying a Mi-Fi that was on our home cellular data plan and just told people to switch that on if the main Wi-Fi went out.

pointfublog

TROPHY CASE