Farewell, Redwood
Bidding a sad goodbye to Virgin America
I set down my phone, after taking a selfie in the purple and pink mood-lit interior of VX26. As we waited for pushback, I reminisced back to when I first learned about — and subsequently became obsessed with — Virgin America. I learned of “Redwood” when Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht broadcasted an episode of Diggnation from Virgin America’s first class.
From that day on, I couldn’t wait to find a way onboard. Being an lonely high schooler living in Jacksonville, Florida, there wasn’t any way for me to reasonably try out Richard Branson’s new venture. It wasn’t until I moved out to San Francisco post college graduation that I had the chance to fly Virgin America for the first time.
In a string of spontaneity, I booked a last minute hop from San Francisco to Los Angeles to help a friend drive their car back from southern California.
Sitting in 2A, I sang along to their safety dance. Its lyrics I had learned through repeated plays on YouTube. Duetting with a marketing director that was seated next to me. All to the horror of the flight crew: “You two need to fly less,” the in-flight team lead said shaking her head. 2C and I laughed it off. I smiled and kept singing along.
Unexpected Turbulence
Watching Virgin’s growth is fascinating. It’s a balance of amazing and half-baked experiences. When things go smoothly Virgin feels like a daydream full of attitude and hope. When things go sideways you see the limits of Virgin America’s reach, and how thinly stretched any startup airline is. Equipment swaps are painful outside of SFO or LAX, weather delays cascade, and their call center can quickly become overwhelmed in the smallest of incidents.
Considering their tiny presence in most of their destinations, airside experiences can feel haphazard and improvised. Boarding out of borrowed gates from Virgin’s other brands, or gates that were primarily used by other airlines. Their LAX experience lagged behind America and Delta, and feels like the worst of Los Angeles. Today, Terminal 3 is a tire fire — which makes sense why they located their only lounge there.
Yes, it wasn’t perfect— but what airline is?
The checkin area succeeds in being different. Current pop hits play while you wait in line, the kiosks resemble iPads, and the high-backed red chairs and shiny white tables signal to your average guest that this isn’t United.
Virgin’s website recently got a breath of fresh air, by Work&Co. Featuring a responsive design and well-intentioned experience that, sadly, their Sabre Sonic reservation system can't keep up with. The user experience stutters and often produces frustrating errors. I’ve spent hours trying to book a flight only to encounter bugs that push me back to the homepage. For being so tech-focused, they only recently launched an iPhone app; it frustratingly takes 30–40 seconds to load.
In 2007, Virgin represented the best a domestic airline could hope to be. It’s economy class still outpaces the mainline fleet from American, United, Delta, Southwest, and jetBlue. Sure, First Class takes up too much room to be cost efficient, and newer transcontinental focused configurations has made Virgin’s current product appear obsolete when compared to lie-flat beds and suite-style seating.
As an Elevate status holder (those at their Silver and Gold tiers), you are provided with a dedicated 1–800 number to contact for reservation assistance. Until recently, this number essentially dialed the phone tree automatically, getting you right to an agent. The system cycled between prompts saying “Thanks for calling Virgin America,” “Your call is being connected”, transfer keypad tones, and “Please wait.” It felt like falling down a rabbit hole for half a minute until a person picked up.
Virgin America Knows All the Places You Wanna Be
Their route network has been steady: an abundance of short-haul flights up and down the West Coast, and an oddly impressive transcontinental reach. Focused on the primary cities San Franciscans want to fly to. Attempts to break into new cities like Philadelphia and Toronto have been met with capacity and pricing wars Virgin could never win. Yet, they worked diligently to make a focus city in Dallas, fighting American, Southwest, and the City Council the entire way.
Virgin fought and earned slots at every major airport: Chicago’s O’Hare, all New York City airports, the major Washington DC Airports, and even Boston. Plus their focus on leisure trips have made traveling to many cities in Florida, Mexico, and Hawaii easy.
It felt like we were all in on the experiment.
The inflight experience for their “Main Cabin” was unprecedented in 2007, and remains strong to this day. They rolled a custom Linux system for their inflight entertainment system and remain the only airline with Wifi access and AC power on every plane, in every seat. Inflight team members (flight attendants in VX parlance) were consistently upbeat and pleasant. It appeared to me that every employee held the mentality that the passenger experience was solely their responsibility.
Yes, it wasn’t perfect — but what airline is? It felt like we were all in on the experiment. We granted leeway and in exchange were cast in pink lights, pop music, and hope for a change in the way we travel. Virgin America gave us a taste of the flying experience we could deserve.
We Lived in On Up in the Sky
The news of the Alaska acquisition came on a solemn morning — following a weekend of speculation that jetBlue was in talks to buy Virgin. At work, the entire office treated me as if I had lost a family member when the acquisition was first announced. Offering comfort and stories of their favorite Virgin trips.
It’s sad to see us lose our hometown, underdog airline. San Franciscans all wanted Virgin America to succeed, and many went out of our way to travel with them. It felt like they were part of our community — bringing a San Francisco mentality wherever their red finned planes went.
In the next two years, Alaska will retire the Virgin America brand. A brand they spend 2.6 billion dollars to buy. Like every major corporate culture they are saying the right things about adopting Virgin’s personality, but the evidence so far shows it’s likely bullshit.
The marketing campaign for the merger is “Different Works.” It’s beyond me why Alaska would want to highlight how odd this merger is. Truth be told, we know that the changes will focus on cost cutting to maximize the benefit of less competition.
Americans have experienced a vast reduction of competition in the United States (over 85% in the past few years). Airline consolidation has a significant impact in the level of service — airlines can provide worse experiences if customers can’t easily switch carriers — as well as price — just look at how the wars over SeaTac to see how competition lowers prices for passengers.
And yes, Alaska is good. Thank you for reminding me of that, friend from Seattle. But Virgin America was different. Different in ways passengers had not seen before.
Unlike Alaska or jetBlue or any other domestic carrier, Virgin gave us the option to make a choice. We could trade the standard comforts of hundreds of flights to hundreds of cities, entire concourses of gates and lounges, for warmth and personalization. Scrappiness that didn’t always turn out well. We could trade working websites and elaborate elite status tiers for Twitter based customer service and genuinely happy employees. We could trade ultra-low-cost fares for an onboard experience that delights.
It wasn’t for everyone, but it gave us a way to choose something different: an airline trying to make getting there half the fun.
And As Always, Thank You Flying Virgin America
A few days ago, my Virgin America flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco approached the Bay Area. The lights of San Jose appearing on the right, and our plane working it’s way back down to the ground. Upon arrival, we were met with the most Virgin Americanesque experience possible:
Arriving a few minutes late, like any good Californian, we landed into a bit of taxiway traffic. After about 20 minutes, we were parked up at an odd, rarely used gate.
Pop music filled the plane. Cast in purple lights we grabbed our bags and filed off the aircraft. Saying goodbye to the friendly and sassy flight crew as we stepped into the matching pink jet bridge. The delays and last-minute gate change placed us in what appeared to be an area for international arrivals.
We found a squad of Virgin America team members waiting for us. Holding doors open, badges pressed to security sensors, guiding us back through a maze of hallways into the beautiful concourse of Terminal 2. Even in the sad day of this announcement, there were a team of smiling gate agents and supervisors trying to make our day a bit more fun and easier despite the circumstances.
If you’re also feeling a bit nostalgic about the end of an era, go read Richard Branson’s letter to Virgin America. Go watch the safety video again, and if Alaska stops playing it, mark my words. I’ll cut those Seattlites so fast they’ll spit out their polenta.
I would love to hear your favorite VX story — was it the time you saw a full-sized German Shepard in the row next to you? Or when inflight team lead Mickey high-kicked along with the safety dance?
