{"id":27,"date":"2008-09-01T12:27:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T17:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.systemarchive.com\/2008\/09\/01\/virgin-america-a-nice-airline\/"},"modified":"2008-09-01T12:27:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-01T17:27:31","slug":"virgin-america-a-nice-airline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/01\/virgin-america-a-nice-airline\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin America A Nice Airline"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer, I had the opportunity to fly round-trip on the airline Virgin America<\/em><\/a> and found it to be a good experience.<\/p>\n

As can be expected, flying on an airplane is more expensive during the summer, especially this year with the huge jumps in oil prices.\u00a0 This year, despite researching prices two months in advance, I discovered that the cheapest airline for where I want to go was Virgin America<\/em><\/a> and not a U.S. airline.\u00a0 Usually I fly on American Airlines<\/em><\/a> or United Airlines<\/em><\/a>, but this year they were at least $100 more expensive despite two months in advance.\u00a0 Having never heard of or flown on Virgin America<\/em><\/a> before, and not sure how much of their web site was marketing fluff, I was concerned about what my experience would be, but booked my flight on the airline anyway.<\/p>\n

On both flights, checking in at the airport was easy.\u00a0 There were no lines and they had multiple staff at the counter.\u00a0 Some staff were handling passengers not using the check-in kiosk as well.\u00a0 At one airport, the person at the counter even explained everything on the boarding pass to me, even though the boarding pass is very easy to read and the information is laser printed on a small piece of cardboard instead of the traditional long piece of paper with info on it printed using ink that fades away over time.\u00a0 Other airlines had long lines at their counters.<\/p>\n

The airline had big piles of headsets in the jetway for passengers to take.\u00a0 This might change though in the fall as I read somewhere they plan to start charging $2 for headsets later this fall.\u00a0 On the other hand, right now, they don’t charge for the first checked baggage like some U.S. airlines do.\u00a0 Once in the plane, after the door is closed and the plane leaves the gate, the flight attendant walks through the plane with a big bag of blankets and ask if anyone wants to borrow one (at no cost).<\/p>\n

In the plane, they use blue and purple lighting in the cabin.\u00a0 There’s leather seats, even in coach.\u00a0 The seats are a little larger than the ones on\u00a0 American Airlines<\/em><\/a> or United Airlines<\/em><\/a> flights, which might have been possible because Virgin America<\/em><\/a><\/em> uses Airbus A319 or A320 planes rather than Boeing 737 planes.\u00a0 The seatbacks have a little screen on it with a bunch of features I’ll mention later.\u00a0 I understand the leather seat and seatback screens are also available on JetBlue<\/em><\/a> flights, but I’ve never flown on JetBlue<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 There’s a normal 120V AC outlet between seats, so you don’t have to worry about running out the battery in your laptop or other electronic device.\u00a0 The seatback tray still has an indention for a cup unlike the U.S. airlines with their plain tray.<\/p>\n

Ok, so what does the seatback screen do?\u00a0 The screen offers Dish Network<\/em><\/a> satellite TV, movies (both free and pay-per-view) , music (both free and pay-to-listen, and some in foreign languages), Google Maps map so you can track the location of plane (including its altitude, speed, distance to destination, and the temperature on the outside of the plane [wow, I didn’t know how cold it gets outside at 35,000 feet]), and games.\u00a0 The TV and games are controlled by a corded remote control in the armrest.\u00a0 One side has TV controls while the other side is a QWERTY keyboard and gamepad.\u00a0 There is a QWERTY keyboard because the screen also lets you chat with other passengers on the plane.\u00a0 Finally, the screen lets you order food and drink. \u00a0 Virgin America<\/em><\/a><\/em> says it’s a “cashless” airline.\u00a0 So when you want to eat, you use the screen to order food, and then you swipe your credit card through the reader at the bottom of the screen or on the side of the corded remote control.\u00a0 A flight attendant then brings your food to you on a tray.\u00a0 Although the food appears to be a larger size than the U.S. airlines, unfortunately, that also means it costs more (as much as $9).\u00a0 Water, juice, and soda are free.\u00a0 Order a cup using the screen and they bring it to you.<\/p>\n

In summary, flying on Virgin America<\/em><\/a><\/em> this summer was an enjoyable experience and time seemed to go by a lot faster than it did in the past.\u00a0 I would certainly consider flying on the airline again in the future.\u00a0 On the other hand, I’m a little bit concerned about SuperShuttle<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 After one of my Virgin America<\/em><\/a><\/em> flights, leaving the airport, the SuperShuttle<\/em><\/a><\/em> van took twice as long as it should to get me to the destination because the van driver couldn’t work his GPS unit.\u00a0 Luckily I wasn’t in a hurry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer, I had the opportunity to fly round-trip on the airline Virgin America and found it to be a good experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barnetthsu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}