Not that kind of high. You people should know I don’t do that. No, I’m talking about flying in an airplane.
Mister and I just got back from a vacation to New England to visit my family. Being so far away, the only practical way to get there was to fly. I looked over the fares available and found a really decent fare on Virgin America. I flew Virgin Atlantic when I went to Europe way too long ago now, and I was eager to fly them when I went back east for Grandma’s funeral last year. Their low fares didn’t hurt either.
Virgin America doesn’t have the stuffy attitude that the other carriers have. None of that “you’re gonna sit in a cramped metal tube, get charged way too much for everything, and like it, dammit!” attitude that the legacy carriers seem to have. They’re hip, with it, and have a pretty good sense of humor. They also have rocking customer service. All their planes have regular electrical plugs in every row, and their headphone jack is standard, so you can use your regular headphones instead of typical sucky airline headphones. There’s also an in-flight entertainment system on the back of every seat that offers satellite tv, movies on demand, music, video games, seat to seat texting, and you can order meals and drinks through it as well. They deliver meals really fast too, and if they’re out of something, they take it off the menu so you don’t try to order something that’s in someone else’s stomach. Overall, I give Virgin America a huge thumbs up.
But I have a BUT. Virgin America is based out of San Francisco International Airport (SFO), so they have quite a few more gates there than at other airports. My biggest issue is that when we landed at SFO, no one could tell us what the gate assignment was for our connecting flight. For example, on the way home, we landed at SFO nearly an hour late, leaving us only an hour until our next flight was scheduled to board. You’d think that at this point in time, someone would know which gate we can hang out at. But no, that was not the case. We were directed to a customer service desk on the other end of the terminal that was unmanned. We sat there for awhile, got a snack, and no one even came near the desk. Finally, I went to a nearby gate and finally found out that our flight would be leaving from… the gate we came in at. Now mind you, all this running back and forth was a huge ordeal because [insert confidential reason here]. I just thought that it was really unorganized of them to not know gate assignments. It happened as we connected through SFO on our way to Boston as well, but we sat tight and ended up not having to move then. That part of it was probably the worst part of the whole experience.
When we did finally get back to the now-known correct gate, we were entertained with an open Q&A session by the pilot of the flight leaving the gate before ours. Even though it wasn’t our pilot, it was really nice to see that the pilot cared about his passenger’s flight experience. I wanted to ask him why he was answering questions instead of doing preflight checks, but Mister wouldn’t let me. I did, however, get a few opportunities to enjoy Virgin’s adorable safety video.
All in all, I highly recommend Virgin America. Their fares are extremely reasonable, and their customer service kicks ass. Now if they could just get their act together on the gate assignment issue at SFO.
Note: I was not paid to do this review. I paid good money to fly on Virgin, and like I do with other stuff I really like, I wanted to tell the world. Consider yourself told!
I flew Virgin to go to Hong Kong and to go to Mexico (both times through London, from Paris). I remember they were fun: we got little yellow plastic ducks and colorful toothbrushes etc. Very laid-back attitude too.
I don’t pick the airlines, I usually go with the cheapest, then I narrow it down from experience. I tend to avoid American airlines because the customer service is shit (sorry, but it’s my experience!). For long flights, I like Middle-Eastern companies, the planes are very new and the service is awesome if you don’t mind stopovers in the Gulf region.
I’ve only ever flown around the US and then to Europe, so I haven’t had the opportunity to fly a Middle Easter airline (or SE Asian – I hear Singapore Air is great!). I’ll agree that American airlines are crap (American, US Air, United, Delta), but within the US, V. America and JetBlue are decent. I have flown V. Atlantic and I remember a little travel bag with toothpaste and such in it, but not ducks!
And don’t worry about the spam blocker – I’ll try to find that word in my “banned words” list and take it out. Your comment went into moderation like all comments do – I’m not showing any spam.
:lol: my comment is getting blocked because I use the name of the company, which can also be something else… :lol:
I doubt Virgin has any bases near me, but still, this is good to know!
Glad you got to visit your family :)
They start flying to Ft. Lauderdale next month, but that’s as close as they are right now. You can keep an eye on their website or subscribe to their twitter stream @virginamerica to keep updated.