Deflowering Virgin America

Last month I had to make a quick trip to Palo Alto, which is about equidistant between SFO and SJC. I usually take JetBlue into San Jose for this route, but I decided to try the recently launched Virgin America instead. That was a mistake.

At Kennedy, we left from one of the international terminals, with the typical long international terminal security line. From the gate we took a bus to the plane, and then had to walk across an inch deep puddle in freezing weather to get on the plane. I should have worn more waterproof shoes. :-(

The first thing you notice when you get on the plane is that it looks like a nightclub, or at least a hip restaurant. There’s purple mood lighting, and ambient electronica music in the lavatories. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s like a restaurant that wants to be hip but hasn’t quite succeeded yet. This was the emptiest flight I’ve been on in seven years. Many people had an entire row to themselves.

I was able to change to an exit row aisle seat onboard the plane. However the seat did not recline, and wasn’t nearly as comfortable as JetBlue’s more padded seats. Still this was fortunate because, Virgin America’s regular coach class seat has quite a bit less room than even the most cramped seats on JetBlue. I would not fly this airline in coach again. The business class seats are better, and a few coach passengers got random upgrades to business class (also only about half full).

Food is available on the plane; but it costs money, even the snacks and chips JetBlue gives you for free. You order it with a credit card through the touch screen on the seat in front of you. The video selection is better than most airlines’, but still not up to the level of JetBlue’s. They have less than half the channels. They do sell some recent movies though. (On the flight home I also found some half decent “classic” episodes in the library for free.) The TV is a widescreen, but non-HD shows are stretched to fill the available space. I hate this.

Unlike JetBlue, Virgin’s entertainment system has video games too, but like most airline video game systems, the controllers are very hard to use and can be actively painful after just a few minutes of playing. A Wii remote this isn’t. It’s better to just sit back and watch TV.

The best part about this airline is that there are regular NEMA-5 grounded outlets at every seat. You don’t need a special adapter. That’s how I’m typing this. I could not have written this article in a regular seat though. I had to take an uncomfortable emergency exit row seat that didn’t recline.

Bottom line: will I fly Virgin America again? Only if I can do it in first class (which is not totally unreasonable: a first class ticket from JFK to SFO is still only about a quarter of what a non-stop coach ticket on that route cost during the Bubble years) but if I’m in coach I’d much rather be on JetBlue.

Then again maybe not even in first class. After I wrote the last paragraph (just before we landed) I didn’t yet know Virgin had lost my luggage. They did eventually find it, though I’m not sure where. It arrived at my hotel about eight hours after we landed just as I returned with $150 worth of new clothes from the Men’s Wearhouse. I thought about taking Virgin America first class for this weekend’s trip to L.A. but they don’t allow pets in first, only in coach. Furthermore they don’t take any pets as cargo, and I have to take two cats and a dog, so Beth and I will be flying Delta instead.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 1:35 PM and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can make a comment or trackback from your own site.