I flew back from San Francisco today and, for the third leg in a row, was on a plane without a functioning entertainment system.  Right now I’m 1/4 on my Virgin America flights as far as RED goes, and that kind of experience annoys me a lot, but I have a feeling it annoys the general flying public a whole lot more.  If I were VX I would be worried that every time their “dark” plane goes aloft, there are about 100 people on board who might not come back because the reason they bought their ticket -RED- doesn’t work.

Don’t get me wrong, Virgin proved to me again today why they are a great airline and why I hope they stick around for along time.  Their people, the most important part of any organization, are outstanding, right up there with JetBlue and Southwest employees.  The agent at the check-in area put me on standby for a flight more than 4 hours before my scheduled departure when apparently VA policy says you should only do it when that flight is within 2 hours of my original departure time.  The gate agent also gave me a seat the second I walked up to gate and didn’t make me wait until the very last second for a middle seat in the back as most other airline would (that probably had something to do with the fact that the plane was no more than half full).

VX went even further and gave me something tangible for the inconvenience of not having TV for a 40 minute flight. Great.  When I went to cash in that voucher on board for a drink, the flight attendant said keep it and gave me one on the house, double great!  All these are great examples of how VA has done a great job hiring their staff, and I thank them for it.

The problem for me though, and for Virgin, is that I now have three vouchers sitting at home here good for a free drink, movie or TV show on my next flight.  I love getting free stuff, but I would love it even more if I could use some of the great technology VX has on board their fancy new planes.  It was great the one time I used it, but the prospect of not having any inflight entertainment on my next transcon will definitely way heavy on my decision to book with them in the future.

Again this isn’t even really about my experience, but the one the general, and less forgiving, flying public has with VX.  They are more than likely giving VX a try for the first time.  If they had heard great things from their friends about the cool gadgets on board VA (especially for the techy SFO crowd) they would be sorely dissapointed.

As to whether or not having a dark aircraft flying around the skies (or unreliable live aircraft) has any effect on Virgin’s return customers, only they know.  But I would hope its something they would move to correct sooner rather than later.  Virgin America’s best hope for success in the current catasrophy that is the airline industry is that their amazing staff will attract those disgruntled passengers back for another try in the future, this time when they can tune out to ESPN instead of a blank screen.

Air France has outfitted one of their A318s with equipment that basically lets cell phones do anything in the air they can do on the ground. For the first three months of operation only data transmission will be enabled – ie text messages and Internet over the regular cell phone network. After that however voice calls will be allowed while passengers reactions are recorded via surveys at the end of every flight. Based on the results of that survey, Air France will then decide if this service should be limited to data use but no voice calls, and whether or not they will expand the service to their entire fleet.

European low cost carrier Ryanair also plans to allow mobile phone use in-flight. They are forgoing the whole “lets see how customers like it” phase and equipping all 150 aircraft in the fleet with tiny mobile phone stations. They claim customers wont mind the distractions on the shorter, busy routes Ryanair flies. I’m sure the fact that Ryanair gets a cut of the sky high (oh that was a good pun) international roaming rates customers will be charged when they use the service has nothing to do with it either.

Other airlines are getting in on the testing action as well. Qantas has been quietly testing their own in-flight data service for cellphones on a 767; with over 19,000 passengers having used the service to date. They have no plans to add voice service, but might consider going fleet wide with data service. Emirates is also equipping its entire fleet with the technology, forgoing the testing period. I think this is probably because of their desperation to have the latest and great of everything in the airline industry and less because it may actually be useful to passengers.

All the services being tested by airlines will work in the middle of the ocean, an upgrade over previous versions, because they connect via satellite, rather than via ground towers. Luckily for those of us flying in the United States, we won’t have to worry about the person next to us yelling for five hours across the country any time soon. The FTC decided earlier this year there would be no use of cellphones in flight, and we all know how fast out wonderful government can change their mind once they’ve come up with a position.

[via The Economist (subscription required)]