Update On A Plane
Jan 6, 2008
Just
checking in with a small update. You've probably already guessed
that we're not going to have a show this week, which is largely my
fault as I didn't anticipate that my traveling would wipe me out so
much. We should be back as usual next week, but I'll be at
CES in Las Vegas this week so we may have a push there too. My trip
back to NY was a great time, got some relaxation in and also
managed to hit the most fantastic Chinese Food place on the
planet, which I always make time for when I'm back east. I
actually made sure to post a very favorable review of the place on
my Yelp! page. Yelp! is an awesome little site that has some
brutally honest reviews of restaurants, stores and other stuff.
I've found that while I have no tolerance for generic social
networking sites like MySpace or Facebook, more specific social
sites have a lot to offer.
On to the
trip, my wife and I flew the new Virgin America airline and it was
a very interesting experience all around, both good and bad. Let’s
start with the bad points, since I prefer ending on better notes
when possible. I originally booked our flight on July 7, a full 5
months and 16 days before we were to fly out. I always book long
flights way ahead to ensure I can get an emergency seat, since I
have a rather severe terror of flying, I get claustrophobic in
small spaces after extended periods and I’m about 6’2” with a need
for legroom.. Virgin America offers an option to pay $25 extra for
“premium seating,” which the emergency row is considered and I
gladly paid the extra money for the comfort. I received an email
confirmation, and all seemed well. In early November there was a
message left on our answering machine informing us that the flight
time was moved up much earlier in the morning, which again was no
problem. All this time I had been doing nothing but pimping the
hell out of the airline, telling everyone how much I was looking
forward to it, I think even on the show once or twice.
The day
before our flight, I logged in to do online check-in, and noticed
our “premium seating” had been revoked. No refund of the premium
rate, no phone call, they had simply booted us into a standard row
and I find out the day before we’re leaving. Clearly, I’m pissed
off. I call the Customer Service line and in all fairness, I think
I did a poor job of explaining the issue to the woman I spoke to. I
think she read my anger as being just at the lack of refund, not
the seating change and the lack of notification about the change.
If they had properly notified me about the seating change, I might
have been able to call earlier and possibly have gotten my seats
back or at least been moved to another flight that day with seating
available. I called back a second time, and this time explained my
issue more clearly to a different person but he offered no help at
all beyond an apology. After this I called my mother to let her
know the time our flight was coming in, and of course mentioned the
seating nonsense. She advised me to check to see if any of the
front ‘bulkhead’ seating was open, as it was typically still more
spacious than standard seating. I did that, and sure enough there
were two seats open and I immediately called VA back and got a
really helpful guy in Florida who got everything taken care of for
me, which kept my head from exploding. He got my seats changed for
the same cost as the refund, although after the failure to notify I
felt I should have received the refund anyway, especially since we
lost the emergency seats on the flight back which had not been
changed at all. Regardless, at least we had potentially better
seating. That was the end of the negative part of the experience,
but it makes me wonder whether VA will be our first choice for an
airline on our future trips. Incidentally, I have not seen that
refund come through as of this writing and I will be contacting
them on Monday if it hasn’t shown up by the end of the week.
Now the
flight itself was great. Happily the bulkhead seating was actually
better than emergency row seating, and the overall atmosphere of
the plane was a very refreshing change. I have posted a Flickr
photoset with pictures of the Linux based computer that each seat
has, including the available features and some that aren’t quite in
place yet. Overall the whole approach to flying that Virgin is
trying to promote is fantastic. Three prong power outlets and USB
ports in each seat, a flipside remote control that retracts into
the seat arm and has a full QWERTY keyboard, on demand drink
service and of course the 9” widescreen touch screen computer with
a reasonably hefty free selection of movies, TV and reportedly
3,000 or so MP3s. There is also premium content, and it featured
reasonably recent movies such as The Bourne Ultimatum and
Resident Evil: Extinction. I tested out the chat feature,
which would be really useful if you’re traveling with friends and
aren’t seated together but otherwise is simply a cute thing to play
with for 5 minutes. The drink ordering is a genius move when you
think about it. Less of that wobbling cart gridlocking the aisle
when you badly need to piss, the ability to get a drink when you’re
actually thirsty instead of when they bring it to you. All around,
the on demand model is a fantastic way to go for airlines. All in
all, a very good actual flight. It’s really a shame that the
customer service end was largely negative, because like most people
I remember more of the bad than the good about the flight. In the
end, will I fly Virgin again? Well, I’m going to send a letter to
their customer service department and that answer will depend
largely on the response.
And not
that note, I bring a close to this rambling missive. We are
planning to record something while I’m in Vegas, and depending on
time I may have something for the 9th. Until then, take
it easy.
