Jaunted

To cut to those right away, our flight's RED entertainment system was afflicted by a minor problem and a major one: Amusingly, the movies for offer were incorrectly labeled, causing a woman behind me to get the weepie "Atonement" when she was expecting the happy-go-lucky "Juno." (But it gave me a little giggle to see the poster of Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood" with the tag line, "Cocaine! The Musical." Is that what that milkshake bit was all about?)

More significantly, the much touted order-from-your-seat food system was out of commission "because our system is from hell," a flight attendant told me. I rang the call bell to ask if there was any meal service at all and found that the attendants had been taking cash for snack boxes in the absence of the usual system. It would have been much worse to suspend food service entirely on a six-hour flight, for which I was uncharacteristically unprepared.

Now that I've griped, I will say my flight was a very civil and pleasant experience, which is rare for domestic travel these days. Boarding was largely logjam-free, perhaps due to the plane's deeper than usual storage bins. And the novelty of flying in such a new-looking plane hasn't worn off yet; the Macbook-style white plastic shells over the seat backs are still pristine, even if they do require some Nair-smelling chemical to keep them looking good.

The entertainment selection was great. I enjoyed 2008 Academy Award winner "The Counterfeiters" without any obvious censorship and found some of my favorite bands in the listening section. I was itching to try out the plane chat room but found myself alone in it... Come on, guys! And to mention something largely inconsequential, I noticed that all of the flight attendants working my trip were male. I don't think such a factor really contributed to the service we got, but it suggests a systemic willingness to do things differently--and not in the here's-another-fee sense.

All Virgin has to do now is keep piling up the cash so it can stay competitive with its fares. It's nice to be able to believe the hype for once.

Related Stories:
· Virgin America coverage [Jaunted]
· Flight Reviews coverage

Tags: Airlines / Virgin America / The Virgin Virgin / Flight Reviews

by egw