Airline Fanatic

Virgin America sent all of its eleVAte (VA’s frequent flier program) members an email this morning giving them advanced notice about a promotional flight they are throwing together with Victoria’s Secret. 

VA is throwing an extremely Virgineqsue event, without the typically creative Virgin title – Victoria’s Secret Supermodel PJ Party.  Two underwear models (Selita Ebanks and Miranda Kerr) will be on board this flight from New York’s JFK to LAX, and it will only happen once – November 28th on Flight 317.  Since I won’t be able to be on that flight (you know, the whole work thing) I wanted to let all my readers now about it instead.

Other than the beautiful bodies on board – who will most likely stay couped up in first class for the majority of the flight – there will be prizes, PJs and, according to the email, “more.”  Now that sounds exciting.  You can book your tickets to the flight here, last time I checked, it was still on $159 one way, which is a great fare even when there aren’t supermodels on board.

Oh, and don’t get any lofty ideas about joining the mile-high club on this flight, in typical Virgin America fashion this thing will be a media magnet, so there will be plenty of cameras on board to catch you in the act.

Fast CompanyMagazine just came out with their November issue, and inside I wasn’t surprised when I found an interview with Virgin America’s CEO: Fred Reid. Why was I not surprised? Fast Company is always interviewing people involved with “it” brands, and there is nothing hotter in the aviation world right now than Fred Reid and Virgin America. You can check out the mostly fluff piece over on Fast Company’s website.

Inside you’ll find mostly what would expect to see from Virgin and a new low cost carrier. The legacy carriers have terrible customer service, we improved on things a little bit from the way JetBlue operates, and added that little bit of Virgin flair that makes all of their companies special. Two things I found out about VA I didn’t know before: they will only fly to primary airports in the cities they serve. This means airports that are usually LCC favorites like Oakland (OAK), Long Beach (LGB), and Ft. Lauderdale (FLL), won’t see any red tails in the foreseeable future. Also, Reid plans to offer meals on his planes that cost $20! He thinks those able to afford first class will be able to expense it, and he is probably right, but I still find it hard to believe he can make airline food taste good enough to justify $20. We shall see though, after all, VA is part of the Virgin empire, and crazy stuff happens over there all the time.

The BBC is reporting that several Flybe pilots and crews are refusing to work on the the discount carrier’s Aerospace 146 fleet. According to the BBC, there have been 10 leaks of contaminated air over the past 15 months. One one flight, two attendants fainted in midflight and the entire crew had to be hospitalized upon landing. If the air crews were having this tough a time, its hard to imagined how unseasoned travelers would deal with the same air quality problems.

Of course Flybe corporate says: “Flybe is completely confident that its aircraft are operated and maintained to the highest industry standards.”  Not that they would ever admit anything if something was in fact amiss.  Either way, the problem will be gone soon enough – Flybe is phasing out the 146 by February 2008.