My flight to Los Angeles was the first time that I flew on Virgin America. Nintendo booked my flights for me or else I probably would have never tried it out. I usually like to fly American since I have about 167,000 miles there. It turned out that I quite liked flying Virgin. I hate how American and United and a lot of the other airlines feel so old fashioned and stuck in the middle ages and not fun at all. Virgin felt new and modern and fun. They didn’t take themselves too seriously.
The Virgin America ticketing area at O’Hare. Fresh flowers! Club music! Self-check stations that are more like table top touch screens than old-fashioned kiosks.
The boarding passes are cute little square. It’s the little things!
The interior lighting was a soothing blue and purple.
Each seat has it’s own touchscreen where you could play satellite TV for free or watch on-demand movies and TV shows for a small fee. This is also where the safety video was shown… and this was the first safety video that ever made me laugh!
From this touchscreen you could order food and the attendant would bring it right to your seat. Sodas and water were free.
If you wanted something that wasn’t free you could add it to your cart and swipe your credit card. You could also open a tab for the flight.
I didn’t order any food or drinks, but it looked like a good selection.
I also didn’t really watch the TV. On the way to Los Angeles I watched 3 episodes of Breaking Bad on my Kindle.
On the way home I read a bit and also watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, both on my Kindle. Each and every seat on the flight has it’s own outlet under the seat so you can plug in your devices to charge in flight!
Instead of turning my monitor all the way off, since I wasn’t watching TV, I set it to map mode (powered by Google Maps) so I could track our flight across the country.
If you’re too lazy to raise your arm and touch the screen, there’s a remote you can use in the arm rest. On the back of the remote is a full keyboard and touchpad for playing video games that are available.
There is also a talk feature, which I imagine might be useful if you’re traveling with other people but not seated next to them.
The Virgin America ticketing area at LAX. More flowers!
Overall, I think it was all of the little details that added up to a great experience. Method soap in the bathroom. Adjustable headrests and monitors. Illuminated indicators that told you when you had to buckle up but did not include no smoking signs, which I think are true signs that you’re in an old plane. Any one of these things would not make your experience on another airline better, but all together? Awesome.
