Triangle Trip

Everyone is used to their accruing airline miles, and then redeeming those airline miles to get their free airplane ticket.  This is good for most of us who try to find the cheapest ticket possible because we still get the same number of miles independent of ticket price.

However, Virgin America‘s (VX) loyalty program (“Elevate”) is a good reward model in favor of themselves, and not the consumer.  That combined with no status wonders how they will attract the business flyers.

You earn 5 Virgin America Elevate points for every pre-tax US dollar spent on a ticket.  I had flight of total of $49.60, pre-tax was $36.10.  I earned 36 * 5 = 180 Elevate points.

On Virgin America’s website, you can switch back and forth between dollars and Virgin America points when booking a ticket.  The rough conversion is 46.51 points per US dollar.

Examples: A $38 flight is 1768 points, and a $101 flight is 4698 points.

So if you are stuck with a short mileage flight but expensive ticket, go with Virgin America. Virgin America offers you more bang for the buck! You will also enjoy the nice new planes – before they go out of business per The Captain’s previous post.

I flew my first flight on Virgin America on Halloween, and I was pleased.  Virgin America only goes to certain cities, and luckily, my destination was one of the, San Francisco (SFO) to Las Vegas (LAS).  I usually go Southwest, but suprisingly the cost was the same, so I decided to give VA a shot.  Being a normal airline, you choose your own seat, which I much prefer than standing in line of Southwest to fight for a seat.

Since VA is relatively new, it is located in the International terminal at SFO.  The adventure began as my girlfriend and I shuttled to the International terminal from long term parking.  The International terminal is actually the last stop of the shuttle, but if you want, you can walk from Terminal 1 to International terminal, and I decided to do that to see how long it was, since we were early.  It wasn’t too bad, maybe a 5 minute walk, up some escalators.

Inevitably the flight was delayed, as all airlines were delayed out of SFO with the mist and clouds.  No blame on the airline, in fact, they actually made up for it by hosting some "events" to pass the time..  I took part in some soccer, thats right they actually had a little net, and a small soccer ball where were did a shootout.   They gave free drink vouchers and/or free seat upgrades to the winners.  Being Halloween, there were tons of people in costume, one even in a hot dog suit.  I’m not exactly sure how he fit in his seat later, but that was pretty amusing.

The airplane was a new plane for sure, they had the touchscreen displays on the back of every seat.  This was probably the coolest part of the trip, and something I enjoy.  I hear they have this is a lot of international airlines, but this is the first time I’ve seen one. There is a selection of a dozen movies, and a lot of different tv shows you can choose from. Most of the time I just listened to the selection of music they had because the shows were kind of choppy.

Overall, I had a good experience with Virgin America and I would fly them again if the prices are good to my third home, Las Vegas.