United Airlines about to unveil second Polaris Lounge

United Airlines will open a Polaris Lounge for international business and first class passengers on April 30 at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), a major gateway for the carrier’s trans-Pacific flights to Asia and the South Pacific. The SFO outpost will be only the second Polaris Lounge to open since United introduced the new lounge concept at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in early December of 2016. That Chicago lounge quickly became too crowded to comfortably accommodate Polaris international business class passengers at peak times. United was forced to add more space to the lounge — a project that was not completed until late 2017. United no doubt took into account what it learned from the problems in Chicago as it built out the new SFO lounge over the past several months. The SFO Polaris Lounge will be a two-level space that, at 28,000 square feet, is larger than the Chicago Polaris lounge, which covers 16,292 square feet. United has declined to release any photos of the new space in advance of an April 25 media tour. But the San Francisco facility will have several discrete seating areas for Polaris passengers to relax in and recharge. A viewing area overlooking the airport will be equipped with binoculars to give Polaris visitors a chance to take in the airport operations and the larger San Francisco Bay Area adjacent to SFO.<br/>