A Review Of A Non-PR Infected Virgin America Flight
Jaunted decided to test the hype and fly Virgin America without the crack PR team. Result? 2 hour delay, no permanent terminal at JFK, but otherwise a pleasant flight.
They, like every other reviewer, were placated by the nifty in-flight gizmos and soothing mood lighting.
Virgin America Flight Review [Jaunted]
(Photo:Jaunted)
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Comments:
If you are flying out of JFK then you just build delay's into your schedule. It seems like no one gets out of there on-time anymore.
@Buran:
Yes, they clearly suck for deciding that serving a 2nd tier market is less important than launching with much more heavily-traveled, high-end routes which are served by their "cousin," Virgin Atlantic. After all, given how things turned out for the last airline that hubbed out of STL (TWA), how could they not want to launch there?
@JustAGuy2: TWA's demise was due to poor business decisions, not any disadvantage of being located in St. Louis.
besides, Virgin is doomed anyways.
OK, so because of mood lighting they get a pass? Late is late no matter if you can IM your buddy at that back of the plane. Count me as unimpressed here.
I walked past their check-in counter at SFO the other day and it was SEXY SHINY WHITE. Isn't that what counts? Oh, and what is this St. Louis? Is that in France?
Too bad they don't offer services in the mid-west.
@Buran: Ditto. It annoys me to no end that the only a small handful of flights out of STL are offered on a real plane, not a tiny tin can of a commuter jet, and those flights are almost all on America. We may not be the biggest city in the country, or in the midwest for that matter, but IMO, we definitely need more than what we have. And we certainly have the infrastructure and demand for it, less than 10 years ago, Lambert International was actually international. Now the only thing "international" out of Lambert is a flight to Toronto on one of those tin cans.
Late is late no matter if you can IM your buddy at that back of the plane. Count me as unimpressed here.
I don't know how often you actually fly out of JFK, but it's a problem with the airport, not the airlines.
@categorically: With all the other stories I've seen lately, it seems like one would be lucky if their flight was only delayed for 2 hours. And they weren't stuck on the tarmac with shit overflowing from the toilets. That would be enough to give an airline praise.
@yg17:
SWA serves 20+ cities nonstop out of St. Louis - very few carriers would want to launch to go up against that. STL will never again have significant int'l presence - Chicago is too close, as is the East Coast. Fly STL-IAD-Europe or STL-ORD-Europe/Asia.
@JustAGuy2: D'oh, forgot about Southwest. Haven't flown on them in, oh about 14 years or so (nothing against them, I rarely fly and when I have it's always been AA for one reason or another).
Hey, it's like 3 days after its launch. It's going to have screwups. I'd say the two-hour delay is a product of a) being a brand-new airline, or b) the fact that SFO sucks.
Even airlines that have been around for like 80 years **coughcoughNorthwestcoughcough** can't get flights from point A to point B on time.
I think delays aren't really in the airlines' hands. It's a problem with technology, poor management of the few runways, and human's tragic inability to control the weather.
Virgin did nothing wrong and offered nice amenities on a long flight. So, that's good enough for me. I'd like to see them take off from Newark, but I hear that Newark is really a pain to fly from, because of bureaucracy and wind from the nearby ocean.
I'm waiting for Virgin America to open up some more routes. I really like what they're doing, it's just that I don't go anywhere they serve right now (Nashville-Chicago-Shanghai, though I really would rather have Nashville-Chicago-Tokyo-Shanghai because I don't particularly like United).
I used to be one of those SFO haters until I actually started travelling a lot. Then I noticed that SFO actually isn't that bad when compared with, say, Newark (allow 2 hours for baggage screening) or Atlanta (allow 3 hours for screening) or Dallas/Ft. Worth (reduced to one runway because of high winds). And Seattle? Even my sister who lives there says the layout and lack of signage makes no sense at all.
My review: They fly over St. Louis without stopping. Therefore, they suck.
Hey Virgin, provide service here and I might change my mind.