Well, this was the first weekend of VX's new san-sfo service (currently 3x daily but going to 5x daily in another month). Can't complain about the $98 fares, certainly!

February 15, 2008
VX 869 SAN-SFO Y A320-214 N621VA “Air Colbert”

February 18, 2008
VX 866 SFO-SAN Y A320-214 N628VA


Check-in: No particular lines at either SFO or SAN. I do think their table-mounted check kiosks are rather elegant, especially with the flowers on the table. The whole set up looks like something straight out of an Apple store. I had already done web check-in, but I attempted to reprint my boarding pass at SFO, since I like the fact that they use real cardstock. However, for some reason, the kiosk refused to reprint my boarding pass.

TSA: Not VX’s responsibility, but pretty painless both ways. I accidently showed my outbound boarding pass (feb 15 san-sfo) to the security screener at SFO on Feb 18, and he initialed it without blinking an eye. Oops.

Boarding: Pretty efficient. While I was at SFO, they were using gates 1A, 1B and 10 in the “A Pier” of the International Terminal. They were simultaneously boarding the LAX flight from 1B and the SAN flight from 1A, which did make things a bit congested, but they kept making announcements reminding people of which aircraft to board. They started out with preboarding, following by First Class, and then boarded by Groups A through F. At SFO, I boarded with “group C as in Castro District.” Yes, they actually said that. The gate agents were all quite friendly.

At SAN, they used gate 25, a former AA gate, which is also next to the gate used by rival JetBlue (might tempting for a ramper to let one of the baggage carts run off in the wrong direction…). I noticed at SAN they had a big bin full of red headsets by the boarding door, whereas at SFO they didn’t.

In-flight entertainment: Simply put, “Red” knocks the pants off either the Delta or JetBlue IFE systems. The nine inch screen is bigger than JetBlue’s, and the picture quality is excellent. The IFE options have already been described in great detail by other FTers. In summary, there are about 25 pay-per-view movies, which mostly cost $8, although there were also a few free short films from the “college” series. I’d say about ½ the movies were recent releases. There are perhaps 20 channels of satellite TV provided by dish networks. In a few instances, the picture lagged quite a bit, but the quality was generally good. There are also foreign language TV shows, music videos, more MP3 tracks than one could possibly have time to explore, streaming radio channels, and of course chat features (both seat-to-seat and chat room). Being Linux-based, there are a number of open source Linux games. The controller works very well and features a full qwerty keyboard on its back side. The “shop” and “read” features still are not available, and mine also indicated the inflight program guide was unavailable. The airshow feature is paired up with a Google map. Amusingly, the airshow still indicated our speed as 115 mph while taxiing at SAN.

Problems I had: I attempted to use the game function both ways, and in both cases, the system got totally wedged after just a few minutes. Try as I might, I could not exit the game function, nor could I get the system to reset for the remainder of the flight. The touchscreen function also did not work on the anagram game. On my flight back yesterday, I was able to switch back to the satellite TV, but I could not get the game interface to disappear, so I was listening to the audio from the TV while the screen was still showing mahjong tiles. I would recommend avoiding the game feature until they figure out how to make it more stable. I would also recommend bringing your own headsets! I was lucky to pick mine up by the boarding door at SAN. On my return SFO-SAN flight, they only had two pair of headsets available for the main whole cabin, which went to the ladies sitting across from me (as mentioned, there hadn’t been any by the boarding door). Many pax could not listen to the audio since they didn’t have their own headsets.

Seating: I sat in coach, so I’ll talk about coach. The seats are black leather with a white plastic shell on the back side of the seat. The plastic shell, no doubt, helps ensure that the passenger in front of you doesn’t feel you touching the TV screen, and as has been pointed out, also protects against seat kickers. The seat pitch (advertised as 32”) struck me as comparable to the AS 737-400, but roomier than a CO 737-700 or 737-800, in that my knees did not touch the seat in front of me on VX. However, I can say with certainty that there is more legroom on Southwest than on VX. Likewise, I actually found the coach seats on Southwest to be more comfortable than on VX. Maybe it’s just me, but the seat cushion on VX seemed firmer and shorter than on Southwest. The VX seatback angles forward near the bottom, which consequently pushes my derrière farther forward in the seat. Also, the headrest is very stiff, and a bit difficult to adjust. On a transcon flight, I'd pay the $25 extra for a bulkhead or exit row. The bulkhead appeared to have very good legroom.

In-flight service: On both flights, there was a single drink service, and then a trash collection shortly afterwards. No snack mix or pretzels were offered. I asked for water and they gave me a nice little bottle (just like the ones in AS F). The flight attendants did their jobs competently, but didn’t really make any effort to smile or mingle/chat with the passengers (to be fair, it’s a 1 hr 10 minute flight). There was nothing bad about the service, but the service just struck me as perfunctory. I noticed the flight attendants used a beverage cart for coach service in the aft cabin, but passengers in the forward section of Y were served beverages from a tray, a la Southwest. The “buy food” option was unlocked after the flight attendants finished the beverage service. On my return flight, I thought I overheard the flight attendant apologizing to the passenger across from me that they didn’t have any more snack boxes. I did not see anyone else order the snack box, although I admit I wasn’t surveying the entire cabin. On the outbound flight, I couldn’t order food since my IFE system wedged just after they did the beverage service (yes, I suppose I could have just rang the call button, or walked to the galley, but I wasn’t that hungry).

On-time performance: I’ve flown VX three times now, and all three flights were right on-time. That said, not everyone has been so lucky. The day before my outbound, the afternoon san-sfo flight was canceled after a five hour delay due to a mechanical, and the evening sfo-san-sfo round-trip was delayed four hours since it was supposed to be operated by the same aircraft (I actually saw the broken aircraft, N626VA, still sitting out on the ramp as we took off the following day). There were some people on my flight who had been on the previous day’s canceled flight, and they said the staff at San Diego seemed completely unprepared (not too surprising for a new station). Also, while my outbound flight was on-time, a check of flightaware shows it was late the next three days. I would imagine many delays are not VX’s fault, since SFO is a delay-prone airport. Still, Virgin America’s on-time performance has been at or near the bottom of the industry for the past several months. In January, 62% of VX flights were on-time according to flightstats.com, with 22% of flights delayed 45 minutes or longer. For the same month, the US airline industry average was around 72% on-time with 10% delayed 45 minutes or longer. But, as the saying goes, lies, dang lies and statistics. I’m not really sure what VX can do to improve schedule reliability…they are scheduling 50-70 minute turn times at SFO, which certainly should allow for some recovery time, especially compared to Southwest with its 25-30 minute turn times.

JetBlue (B6) vs Virgin America (VX)

--B6 has a selection of complimentary snacks on every flight, while on VX you have to pay for the snacks, but on longer flights, VX has a better selection, and more substantial food options than B6
--B6 has much better seat pitch in Y on the A320 compared to VX (34-36” versus 31-32”).
--VX’s “Red” IFE has sleeker interface, and much more selection than B6
--VX has an extremely comfortable F cabin, while B6’s plans for a premium offering are still very unclear, to say the least
--don’t know enough about the frequent flyer programs
--VX overall is much more stylish than B6. B6 interiors frankly have a rather “utilitarian” appearance to them, although the brand new interior on B6 apparently is incorporating some enhancements (mostly weight-reduction).


Overall, I think Virgin America definitely has the best product of any US carrier. However, they need to continue to work on on-time performance, and they need to make sure the galleys are properly stocked with supplies (headsets, snackboxes etc.) The “Red” IFE system is phenomenal, and I love the mood lighting. Really, the VX product is ideally suited to the transcon market, especially with touchscreen food ordering, and the $8 pay-per-view movies or $6 alcoholic drinks. On short-haul flights, there isn’t much opportunity to partake in the “buy-on-board” opportunities, so it wouldn’t seem like VX gets much ancillary revenue on these flights. I hope they are able to remain in these short-haul CA markets, but I really have to wonder how they are doing financially in these markets with the present low-yields.