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Virgin America

12/2/07

Here's the bottom line when it comes to flying Virgin America right now: no matter what, if you live in New York, DC, San Francisco, LA, or Las Vegas (and soon, San Diego), to fly to any one of those other cities mentioned, you MUST fly Virgin America right now.

The reason for that is simple: VA is just GIVING away airfare right now, and if/when they go out of business in the next 12-18 months, you need to take advantage of these deals right now.

I flew VA for the first time this past weekend; I flew from DC (Dulles) to San Francisco International for $258.  That was the price, with taxes, for a direct, round-trip, non-stop flight.  I booked this flight because I had flown Virgin Atlantic to London many years ago and enjoyed the experience; having seen the teaser film on Virgin America's website about their in-flight entertainment system and generally liking that there was a new airline coming to my town, I figured, I'll buy a round-trip for myself and a round-trip for my fiancée Meg so that both of us, on separate trips, can give this thing a roll.

Now that I've finished my trip, I must say that the "Virgin America Experience" really wasn't that different than anything else I fly regularly.  Sure, you've got purple mood-lighting in the cabin, but that's only during boarding and exiting the aircraft.  The chairs don't have leather-leather but more of a faux plastic-leather; there's no more leg room in coach than on any other airline.  The airline attendants weren't any friendlier, or sexier, or younger than they are on jetBlue; they were fine.  They certainly don't crack any more jokes than they do on Southwest.  The airline safety video is well done, though; it is actually the best one I've ever seen on an airline, in terms of instruction but also in terms of finding a unique way to keep you interested in watching the thing all the way through.

The basics are no different than anything else.  The extras all rely on Red, the in-flight entertainment system that is still in its beta form.  Red is a combination of satellite TV and radio stations (which jetBlue has had together for at least two years now, after adding XM Radio capabilities to its airplanes) with a touch screen that also gives you access to movies (not just one or two, but THIRTY, including some free indie films and a few foreign films, too), archived TV shows, chat (IM with other people on the plane), video games, and food vendor services.  Also, there's a Media Center component within Red that allows you to add songs from a pre-selected list of about 3,000 to a playlist that you can listen to whenever you are not watching TV or movies.

Red is clearly in its beta because a few different things were still not working during my recent flight.  For instance, you have access to about 25 satellite TV stations from the Dish Network; during my flight, at least five of them were always down, and they seemed to not work at random points throughout my flight; with DirecTV on jetBlue, I rarely had issues with the TV.  The touch screen was sometimes hit-or-miss; a solid, well-placed tap on an on-screen button doesn't always lead to that button being selected.  The web service, the TV program guide, and a couple of the games just weren't working at all.  In six months, one could imagine all of this being pretty smooth, but right now, it just isn't, and that left a few of us occasionally looking around with that "WTF?" look on our face underneath the sexy mood lighting.

But, generally, Red is cool and has good potential.  The radio stations (there are more than 20) are mostly solid; I gave "Dance", "Sounds of San Francisco" and "Hip-Hop/R&B" a try during my two flights, and all three stations had a great mix of songs (and, bonus points must be added for the hip-hop station's inclusion of Digital Underground's "Doowutchyalike" original album version in its playlist...yes!).  Ordering food is a snap, although the meal selection--all $9--is minimal: steak sandwich, chicken caesar salad, half sandwich & half salad, or fruit medley.  (I had the full caesar, and it was just fine.)  There's also a handful of snacks for $2 and beer, wine and cocktails for $5 or more, in addition to free sodas, juices and water.

The game selection is a little weak, but then again, it's not like they could build a PS3 into the system; "DOOM" is the one game that I was most excited to give a spin during my flight, but the game was playing slow and disappointed me greatly.  My fave?  Mah-Jongg, which was peaceful and easy to control.  I don't think I saw a Tetris or Tetris-like knockoff available, but there were other games that I just didn't give a spin since I have a Nintendo DS.  Movie selection is great, at least it would be for most people; naturally, I have seen about a dozen of the movies already, but I did watch "Talk to Me" on the way back from SFO; all of the movies that aren't free cost $8, a little stiff for a flick but no big whoop.  On the stations that did work correctly, I watched a little bit of FX, ESPNews, VH1 and Oxygen; they did the job.  Be sure to bring some headphones with you because the VA headphones absolutely fucking suck.  Even your iPod's earbuds will crush the sound quality on the VA headphones; wow.

Overall, the flight experience on VA is okay.  Nothing about it, save for the safety video, is best of breed...but, what IS best of breed is the cost.  Again, I can't stress this enough--to make sure that their first 6-8 months of business features packed airplanes, Virgin management is doing whatever it takes to fill up their planes.  Right now, through December 7th, they are running two ridiculous deals on their already-inexpensive flights (which can be found at http://www.virginamerica.com):

1) Enter promo code ELEVATE25 to save 25% off any flight.
2) Enter promo code DIGGNATION to get a buy one flight, get a companion airfare for free deal.

Meg and I are going to fly to LAX in February; the price right now to fly two people from Dulles to LAX on a non-stop flight on the second deal is $319 (that's with taxes).  Yeah!

Check it out...and hurry, because you know they can't keep giving this shit away forever!

 

Random Bellviews, courtesy of Bell & Longer Community Trust:

• Going from getting smoked by Wyoming to earning a spot in the freakin' Gator Bowl:  Opening Weekend

• "Working from home" under sunny, blue skies in the middle of Florida:  $9.50 Show

• Saying hello to domesticity; saying goodbye to bachelordom:  Matinee

• That feeling after you've had one too many meatballs:  Rental

• Having a gunshot wound to the leg turn into a tragic death:  Hard Vice

 

justin@bellviewmovies.com