Gadling flies Virgin America

by Grant Martin on

So what’s the big deal with this Virgin America that you’ve been yammering on and on about Grant? Are they secretly paying you money under the table to write good things about them?

No, they’re not, and even though I keep asking for free plane tickets (and none have showed up), the fact of the matter is, however, it’s a very different experience than flying a legacy carrier across the country, from in-flight service to entertainment to general ambiance.

Before I get into the details though, I will tell you this: flying still sucks. I have yet to find an economy class service on any airline in the world that is a true pleasure to fly on – you just can’t operate a competitive airline and make everyone comfortable and happy at the same time while remaining profitable. The whole idea of making a coach-class experience better basically has to do with making it suck less — you’re still crammed three people across in seats-too-small with no legroom. What Virgin America has done is made enough distractions so that you temporarily forget about it.

And they do a great job at that. On the jetway, you’re first offered free headseats to plug into VA’s special Red entertainment system. It’s a standard minijack with fairly weak speakers, so you can bring your own set if you want. Once you get on the airplane, you’ll obviously notice the purple, blue and pink ambient lighting which makes the airplane strangely calm. Seats are made of new leather material with plastic backs into which the Red system is integrated. With about 32″ of seat pitch, your space is about on par with other carriers, while the 17.2″ width is slightly wider than the norm.

In flight services start immediately, so once you plop down in your seat you can fire up some Food Network and watch the new hip chef with spiky hair cook octopus stomach while other passengers shuffle past you and cram their luggage-too-large into the overhead compartments.
After pushback and a cleverly animated safety video, you’ll spend about twenty minutes dinking around with Red, perusing your options and trying to get your friends to chat with you via the video system because you’re too afraid to invite the girl in the seat in front of you. Then you’ll probably scroll through the ten pages of pay and free movies and settle on a free flick for the next few hours of bliss. Or maybe you’ll dip your credit card (in-seat) and purchase a premium new release or order a sandwich and bevvy.

Flight attendants don’t roam up and down the aisles with carts per se. Since you order anything you want off of your entertainment system, they sit in back, download your order and come straight to your seat with whatever you want. This clears up space to walk around the cabin if you aren’t glued to your seatback.

And then before you know it, your flight will be over, and you’ll rub your neck, suddenly noticing that you had it cocked all funny because the girl in front of you kept her seat reclined the entire time. Stretching, you’ll swap notes with all of your friends on what movies you watched, agree that it was a pretty sweet flight and head out into the warm streets of San Francisco.

How big of a difference does an in-flight entertainment system make? Consider the effect of adding a fully interactive environment into the back of every seat. You aren’t forced to watch cheesy chick flicks from the nineties. You have options and the system gives back. Children automatically tune into the LCDs and suddenly start to behave. Aisleway traffic goes down because people aren’t wandering around talking or going to the galley for beverages (you order them from your seat). Nobody really makes much noise because they’re locked into their televisions, so the cabin adopts a silent, mood-lit atmosphere. It’s actually quite pleasant.

As I look back down the aisle of the major-carrier A320-SR that I’m currently on, I see six people in the aisle fighting to get around a flight attendant while some are standing talking to friends in other regions of the aircraft. The hot latin guy in 4C is chortling with the young woman next to him and everyone within a two seat radius keeps glaring at them. It’s a stark contrast to what I flew on VA earlier this week.

For now, Virgin America’s modus operandi seems to be working. Everyone I’ve spoken to that has flown on VA has emerged with glowing reviews and I have to admit, on service alone the airline scores high marks. Add an outstanding in flight entertainment system, new aircraft, strong financial backing and a fresh approach to airline travel and you’ve got a winning combination.

New website: Delaycast

by Abha Malpani on

A new website called Delaycast has just gone into beta. As the name suggests, it’s a website that forecasts flight delays so that you can optimize your travel time.

Run by analytical professionals with a strong base in statistics, they run historical flight performance details into advance predictive mathematical models to understand flight delay patterns. Like this they predict future flight patterns basis the airport you are flying from and the time of your flight.

So (as I understand) Delaycast will give you the odds of your flight being on time or getting delayed, calculated from historical data. These odds are useful when booking because you can keep in mind the chances of you being delayed, missing connections, and the possibility of unintended stay-overs. Sounds like they use some math version of Probability(?)

The estimates are based on historical data and you can only search delays basis airports (not flights). They project 4-5 months in the future, and of course, since they are estimates, there are chances that their predictions don’t hold through. To add to that, understandably, they do not take into account “in the moment” delays that could happen while you are flying: weather delays, or technical difficulties that might occur on the day.

In my mind, the main causes of flight delays are: 1) weather 2) technical difficulties in air 3) late take-off due to technical difficulties 4) not being able to land because of issues at destination airport 5) reputation of airline. Other than the reputation of the airline, none of these factors are taken into consideration at Delaycast.

So, all in all, it’s surely a novel concept that provides a service if you take it into account when booking flights. However, everything can change on the actual day of the flight, so how useful is it really?

Single serving friends for a week of travel

by Grant Martin on

It’s been a long week for blogger Grant. Last Monday morning I woke up in New York at 4AM and headed to my Detroit bound flight only to find it and the next overbooked. I naturally volunteered for both and collected 600$ in vouchers in addition to 20$ in food certificates.

Usually when I get food vouchers in the morning, I don’t have much use for them because I don’t get hungry in the morning. So standing in line at Burger King for some 2$ tater tots I started asking people if they wanted some free breakfast. The guy behind me thought I was completely crazy and wouldn’t even talk to me, but the fella in front was totally into it and ended up giving me ten bucks for all of the breakfast that I bought him. Now that I think of it, I’m sure that the two sausage and egg croissants with orange juice that I bought him cost less than that.

Dave was on his way back to Lansing to work on his barn remodeling business. He had been in New York City visiting his girlfriend on central park with whom he apparently had plans to move in with and continue the business from the city. Apparently, even near Manhattan there are barns to repair.

On the way to San Juan on Friday I was sitting next to a guy on his way to a conference from Stanley Security, who after lunch plugged in his earbuds and started singing Indian music. Not singing quietly to himself, singing to the entire front cabin. He was having such a great time though I couldn’t ask him to step it down a notch. He was staying at the Ritz Carlton in Condado for the entire week, enjoying the Caribbean and getting away from the kids in Indianapolis.

As with most passengers I encounter in first class, the guy I’m currently sitting next to doesn’t want anything to do with me, perhaps because he looks just like Stephen Colbert and doesn’t want to have “that conversation” again. He had been reading and annotating an inspirational book for the past two hours and just recently switched to a Macworld and his I-pod which he is seriously rocking out to, albeit silently. The only words that he has said to me so far have been “We need napkins. The world needs more napkins.”

My point is, getting out and traveling exposes you to a fresh round of faces that you normally wouldn’t get in the office working sixty hours a week or staying in and watching NASCAR all weekend. You don’t even need to make friends to appreciate the value of another human being on the road – the inspiration that they supply through their small nuances and behavior make creativity flow through your veins that stays with you long into the workweek.

American Airlines takes off into the blogosphere

by Jeffrey White on

American Airlines has launched a new blog, titled “AA Conversations.” It went up on Friday, April 11 — the end of one of the worst weeks in recent memory for the world’s (formerly) largest airline, which saw it cancel more than 3,000 flights serviced by its MD-80 fleet. The cancellations left tens of thousands of passengers stranded in major hubs across the country.

Not surprisingly, the first post is an apology for the week from hell, along with some helpful links to pages to seek refunds for canceled flights. The company reported that things were back to normal as of this past Sunday, and the blog’s latest post is on the company’s reaction (they say ‘position’) concerning the recent Delta/Northwest merger, which really doesn’t say anything at all.

Yesterday I wrote a post reporting that a bunch of AA pilots have launched their own Web site aimed at giving upset AA travelers a forum to air their complaints about the airline’s service.

No word yet on whether the AA blog is planning to go toe-to-toe with the pilots’ site.

Beware the nose-picker: 10 not-so-common air travel complaints

by Jeffrey White on

The flight attendant whose skirt is too short. The seat mate who picks his nose…and eats the result. The passenger vexed by an odd vibe on the plane, and who insists the flight is haunted.

Chances are these types of things do not top the list of complaints that frequent fliers among us might lob at their airline of choice. We typically are miffed about late departures and delays, Draconian security measures at the airport, lost baggage, that sort of thing. Maybe there are a few of us who feel slighted for having to shell out for booze on international routes on American carriers.

Well, veteran fight attendant and MSNBC.com travel columnist James Wysong has a few not-so-common consumer complaints he’s heard during a 20-year career in the skies. “10 Wacky Complaints About Air Travel” has a few objections that we’ve all probably had over the years (like how to deal with a gassy passenger) and perhaps a few we haven’t (would anybody really care if their favorite airline switched from Pepsi to Coke?).

My favorite: The man with questionable English skills surprised at the water-landing portion of the inflight safety procedural. Alarmed that no one had informed him that this particular flight was landing on water, he confided to Wysong that he could not swim.