Virgin America's In-Flight Entertainment Is So Airline 2.0

September 18, 2007 at 2:38 PM | by pbb | 0 Comments

What is it that they always say about that Web 2.0 stuff? You get to help create the experience right? You who was so quickly to accept Time's Person of the Year honors and all? You have to help.

New York Times reporter recently flew on Virgin America, and he wasn't too happy with the In-flight Entertainment system: Like so many computers we know, Brad Stone's seat-back unit had a mind of its own.

On a flight to New York, his screen "froze" and was off for an hour while he desperately searched for some sort of ctrl-alt-delete. Eventually, it was reset by a flight attendant. On his return leg, Brad got a good unit while passengers all around him were beset with cryptic error messages that zapped the IFE. On that flight, even the FA admitted, "Today was not a good day."

The good news? Unlike most every other airline in this country -- cue Spirit Airlines link -- Virgin America actually wants to hear your complaints, as a matter of fact they call them "bugs". As far as the in-flight entertainment system goes, the airline has established an email address where they encourage all fliers to send their bug reports -- ife a t virginamerica d o t com (replace spaced words with appropriate symbols).

Boing Boing blogger Xeni Jardin, who's flown VA six times, has had much better experiences than Brad's, though:

On all but one flight, RED was totally solid throughout, and the DISH network connection was similarly reliable. There were some glitches on one of those six flights, but most of the features were accessible for most of the flight, and most of the issues resolved (TV, movies, music, chat all good) after the crew rebooted the system

We ripped Charles Ogilvie, who must constantly egosearching Google for mentions of Virgin America, out of Paula Abdul's clutches to get his reaction to the Brad Stone's experience:

We launched August 8th and are getting better daily. It is feedback like this that is essential and we've already begun to take Day One suggestions and make them reality!
Like any other new technology ought to do, we're improving by listening and learning from our guests and teammates.

Apparently, Virign America is baking the Beta IFE follow up in the lab and we should be able to experience it soon.

As for our experience on VA last month, we did find the television was a bit in and out, but no more than a normal JetBlue DirectTV experience. We will be flying Virgin America again next month and will be sure to file updates.

Flown VA? Leave your Virgin America flight reviews here.

Related Stories:
· The Bugs in Virgin America's New High-Tech Flights [NYT]
· Virgin America coverage [Jaunted]
· In-Flight Entertainment coverage [Jaunted]

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