Jon Chin

Over the holidays, we took a trip through Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California.  When we were booking our Los Angeles-Seattle flight, we found that Virgin America was the cheapest flight at $80 per seat.  The next cheapest was about $110 on Southwest.  For almost all the cases that I’ve checked, Virgin has cheaper rates than any other airline.  I hadn’t really heard anything about them other than that they were fairly new, so I was pretty eager to see how they fared.

Parts of the flight impressed me while other parts disappointed.  When we first got to the LAX airport, we found that there were three agents checking people in.  Luckily, nobody was in line when we checked in.  Checkin wasn’t particularly painful other than the less-than-eager attitude of the agents.  I felt like the process took a lot longer than it should.  A few minutes after we checked in, the line had developed to about 30 people and the throughput seemed to be really slow.

The plane felt a bit newer and cleaner than others I’ve been on.  I know that doesn’t really matter to most people, but it’s something I notice.  Legroom felt like it was an inch more than normal.  This isn’t to say that it’s spacious–just that it was less uncomfortable than normal.

I was impressed that all the seats have a touchscreen display built into them and the armrests have a builtin remote control.  The screen was pretty intuitive, but the large number of options might confuse people.  Among others, there are options to watch TV, watch movies, and play games.  The games are free but some of the shows cost money.  BTW I didn’t buy headphones because they charge $2 for them and I’m cheap.  I think that if you brought your own, they’d work.  There were many features that you could click on, but it would just tell you that that feature hasn’t been developed.  One of these was the ability to instant message other people on the plane.  That would be the coolest (IMHO) feature of all!  I don’t know when or how they’ll implement that, but I look forward to seeing it.

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I recognized the games as ones made for Linux, so I assume that their systems are powered by Linux.  The remote control pops out of the armrest so you can use it as a game controller or type.  My guess is that in the future, they’ll let you browse the internet on those displays.

The flight attendants came around midflight as most do and offerred the standard drinks.  However, they didn’t offer us anything to eat with the drinks.  I don’t like drinking without eating.  I wanted my 10 cent peanuts at least.  When Southwest Airlines gives me two or three packages of peanuts, that makes my entire flight a good experience. Aerobell Airlines also offers some complement snacks.

After the novelty of the touchscreen displays wore off, I tried to get some sleep.  The plane was lit up with some really annoying blue lights.  I think it was supposed to make the plane feel trendy and space age, which it was effective at.  However, those lights were the same brightness when we were in the air as they were when we were on the ground.  It made it really hard for sleeping.  They should really just turn those off.  I don’t need to feel cool while we’re flying.

Would I fly them again?  Definitely.  The low fares and cool entertainment is really attractive.  Just remember to bring your headphones.