United Plans 161-Seat Coastliner Airbus A321neos, With New Transcon Product

Ugh. The A321 has brought a plague of herringbone.

Using the XLR for transcon services is a no-brainer, because they can make it from the east coast to the west coast against the fiercest winter jetstream winds without taking a load penalty. That’s exactly the reason that Qantas is replacing its 738s with XLRs. It’s the only narrow-body aircraft in service that’s a genuine 757 replacement in that regard.

Question: So - will transcon EWR - LAX/SFO flights on the 787 or 757 (while the 757s last) be branded as Polaris as well? Giving all these transcon passengers access to the lounge? That will be great for early or late night flights - but in late afternoon - the Polaris lounge at EWR will be packed - with the bank of flights headed over the Atlantic. It is kind of strange - domestic transcon Polaris travelers can access the Polaris lounge but not - from my understanding - be granted automatic access to the regular United Club.

There really ought to be more domestic aircraft like this for transcons. There are so many abysmally long flights that are upwards of 6 hours with extremely poor domestic F products.

LAX to DCA (only Delta's old product), BOS to SFO (only Mint), LAX to MIA (inconsistent with the widebodies), SEA to JFK/BOS (had D1 and Mint at one point) to name a few.

Quite frankly, I think most airlines should have premium transcon on their East to West Coast hubs, Delta should do ATL to LAX on more frequencies and SEA. AA should be doing DCA to LAX and maybe PHL to LAX. UA should have SFO and LAX to IAD.

I would expect it to be the case. Although fwiw, there are also tons of connecting passengers on these flights connecting onto Polaris flights from either side to Europe or Pacific, so the increase in capacity shouldn't be that drastic. This seems to be a response to Delta offering D1 access on transcons since when AA offered Flagship, UA didn't feel motivated to change their lounge policies.

I also wonder if this means HNL widebody flights might get upgraded to even United Club access.

The 757s are on balance 30+ years old (the -200s). All are ex-Continental planes, delivered from 1994 to 1997, 41 in total. The A321 isn't a direct replacement for the 757 in terms of size and performance, but it is the only option and a lot of this makes sense. Curious how these "coastliner" branded planes will work on trunk routes like EWR and IAD to LAX/SFO where there are wide bodies mixed in for positioning and for volume.

United clearly takes a shot at AA when they say that their Suites have more shoulder and elbow space than the competition.

Be prepared against accusation from AeroB13a saying that you're an ignorant American whose intelligence is not enough to realize the superiority Airbus has, ImmortanSynn claiming that this confined space is somehow offering better experience to fliers thus you're making things up, etc.

Major fan of this upgrade. We should see more and more lie-flat on narrowbodies. If United is including Polaris lounge access for transcon (like DeltaOne and Flagship), that'd be swell, too.

So this is the worst Polaris seat ever?

I wonder if DCA - SFO, IAD - SFO & IAD - LAX are on the list of routes that the Coastliner will fly.

Anyone else notice how the new livery looks 'coincidentally' like it borrowed JetBlue's color scheme?

Did anyone else feel the music at the beginning and end of the ad was in slight homage to their old PS music they had on their ads and website in early/mid 2000’s when they had the drawn people in the sky with hands holding them up. If it’s a subtle nod to that, then hat tip.
https://youtu.be/QPQGijfpdvQ

I'm guessing these are going to replace the current 757s flying LAX/SFO EWR, usually in the middle of the day. I would like to see UA add these to EWR SNA/SAN/SEA, as well as LAX/SFO MIA/BOS/IAD and maybe some Hawaii routes.

I assume that passengers on the current 787s that fly LAX/SFO EWR will also be eligible for Polaris lounge access. That being said, the United Clubs at LAX and EWR are both pretty nice (at least one at EWR is, not sure if the other one has been renovated), and I assume SFO also has a nice United Club, so Polaris Lounge access has never been a pain point (but still a welcome upgrade). Hopefully the lounge can handle the crowds.

Sure, but Jetblue uses the entire spectrum of blue (except probably the dark Delta blue), so pretty much any blue will overlap with Jetblue. The only reason the new Alaska 787 livery doesn't overlap with Jetblue is because they have a green tint to their blue.

United should get moving on that acquisition if they want to push it through during the Trump administration. A normal DOJ likely won't approve a UA-B6 merger.

I would fully expect those to be considered once UA gets the full subfleet in place and also sees how many JFK roundtrip slots it actually ends up getting from B6.

I agree. I actually didn't hate the alternating 2-2 / 1-1 lie-flat that FlyDubai had on its narrowbodies. Obviously direct aisle access is preferred for solo and business travelers, but for domestic flights its tolerable as long as its not the 2-4-2 that United once had (still has?) on its legacy 777s.

Agree but also United isn't dumb -- they must have done some analysis that there isn't a market for premium transcon on their California IAD flights, or at least there wasn't before the Silicon Valley-DC lovefest since 2025. I'm guessing Pelosi and Feinstein flew private.

Where and how many bathrooms will there be? Will there be a single bathroom for Polaris and the other 3 in the rear or will there be 2 up front and 2 in the back?

It's Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, I think. That was UA's signature song for a long time. Since the days of the Tulip and the Business Grey/Blue livery.

For an overnight flight, the herringbone isn't terrible. Yeah, you crawl into bed from the foot, but even in reverse herringbone it's not exactly like you just swing your legs around and get out. And if it's nighttime, looking out the window doesn't have much ROI. VS gets lot of hate, and does NZ on the herringbone. But if you just want to sleep and have a light snack, it's really not that huge a difference. And I'd rather have a lie flat in any herringbone variation than a "normal" F seat.

There have been widebody premium transcon SFO-IAD flights on United for years. I always fly that when I go SF to DC. It is not every flight on that route, but it's at least a couple a day, every day.

Is United going to stop flying widebodies on the transcon routes and transition to using these exclusively? If so, that's a massive downgrade -- this herringbone arrangement sucks.

WTFs up with the herringbone seats??? You couldn't survive economically if -- say for example -- they took one row out and pointed the rest of the seats *towards* the windows?

Subfleets are something marketing people love and operational people hate. If all of AA’s XLRs have the same seating configuration and are certified for ETOPs operations, it will give them a lot more flexibility when things go wrong, as they often do at American.

That's right, written by the Gershwin Brothers and traditionally associated with NYC. Woody Allen used it as the opening theme of his film "Manhattan", for example. Funny, I originally saw that film on a United PS flight out of New York. Anyone else remember United's PS?

Arrived in SFO from Tahiti last Friday only to find no available seats in the Polaris Lounge and now they want to allow domestic Polaris passengers access to this lounge??? They can’t even accommodate the international customers now!!!!

@shza those are not premium transcon. Those are just domestic F flights that happen to use widebody equipment, often for repositioning widebodies for longhaul flights.

The full package is United marketing them as United Business/Polaris, so there is a guarantee of equipment, and all the associated perks like lounge access.

If even one of these replaces a widebody flight (of any configuration), it's a downgrade.

And who would pay extra to lay in a coffin like that? Unless they're dead, of course...

Absolutely right. I won’t fly that herringbone nonsense on virgin and I won’t fly it on these new united airbuses either.

AA and UA are pretty much mirroring the LOPAs at this point (789, A321XLR). I wish UA kept the purple. The white is not going to hold up well.

Probably *exactly* the same as the AA 321XLR. So yep, not enough bathrooms. Also Lucky's take that UA is doing it right and AA is doing it wrong is odd. AA is for once giving themselves some more operational freedom.

They've used it in a bunch of their recent ads and announcements.

https://open.spotify.com/track/73msxdESZSHroNLrXVTa2H?si=1FeWNMpzR_-n_WzyBEJDKQ

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNnyZXdueu_/?igsh=MXNodGd2ZzQwZXdsbw==

Be prepared against accusation from AeroB13a saying that you're an ignorant American whose intelligence is not enough to realize the superiority Airbus has, ImmortanSynn claiming that this confined space is somehow offering better experience to fliers thus you're making things up, etc.

I would expect it to be the case. Although fwiw, there are also tons of connecting passengers on these flights connecting onto Polaris flights from either side to Europe or Pacific, so the increase in capacity shouldn't be that drastic. This seems to be a response to Delta offering D1 access on transcons since when AA offered Flagship, UA didn't feel motivated to change their lounge policies.

I also wonder if this means HNL widebody flights might get upgraded to even United Club access.

Agree but also United isn't dumb -- they must have done some analysis that there isn't a market for premium transcon on their California IAD flights, or at least there wasn't before the Silicon Valley-DC lovefest since 2025. I'm guessing Pelosi and Feinstein flew private.

I agree. I actually didn't hate the alternating 2-2 / 1-1 lie-flat that FlyDubai had on its narrowbodies. Obviously direct aisle access is preferred for solo and business travelers, but for domestic flights its tolerable as long as its not the 2-4-2 that United once had (still has?) on its legacy 777s.

I would fully expect those to be considered once UA gets the full subfleet in place and also sees how many JFK roundtrip slots it actually ends up getting from B6.

Sure, but Jetblue uses the entire spectrum of blue (except probably the dark Delta blue), so pretty much any blue will overlap with Jetblue. The only reason the new Alaska 787 livery doesn't overlap with Jetblue is because they have a green tint to their blue.

United should get moving on that acquisition if they want to push it through during the Trump administration. A normal DOJ likely won't approve a UA-B6 merger.

It's Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, I think. That was UA's signature song for a long time. Since the days of the Tulip and the Business Grey/Blue livery.