General 10 Feb 2007 09:52 pm
Let VA fly!
Virgin airlines is trying to get US Department of Transportation approval to get their new “Virgin America” airline off the ground (heh). I’m very interested in this - but before I explain why, let me provide some background…
As a product manager I do a LOT of flying. I’ve flown over 750,000 miles in my seven years with Macromedia/Adobe. Living in San Francisco, I choose to fly United Airlines everywhere because I can fly to almost any major city in the world non-stop. And to enjoy the limited perks afforded by United Airlines, I need to fly over 100,000 miles on their airline (or a Star Alliance partner) per year. So basically, to make United tolerable I have to fly them as much as possible - a situation that gets harder and harder every year.
United has simply lost sight of what’s most important: the customer. The more and more I fly, the worse things get. I often feel as though United staffers think I should consider flying on their airline a privilege. It’s as though I should be thankful when I get treated like a customer. “Please be nice to me today! I swear I’ll be a good passenger. I’ll even try to pay more for my over-priced ticket next time.”
The examples I could give are endless. A few weeks ago I flew from New York’s La Guardia airport to Washington Dulles. I arrived at the United gate only to hear an announcement that my flight would be delayed by an hour. About 45 mins later, they announced a delay of two more hours. That’s fine - weather, air traffic delays, etc, - they happen. However, it was getting to the point where I needed to re-evaluate my travel options because I needed to get to DC. So like half of my fellow passengers, I went looking for a ticket agent to help me. There were none - anywhere. So we all stood around, giving each other that “what the hell?” look. Thirty minutes went by with three United gates, all filled with confused passengers, and not a single United employee in sight. Finally, an agent comes stomping through the crowd and sits down behind one of the gates, focusing directly on her computer. She never once makes eye contact with a single person. She just sits there, typing away while more and more people inch closer, just staring at her awaiting some kind of recognition that we’re all paying humans - a simple “We’re having some difficulties, folks. I’ll help you in just a few moments” would have sufficed. But nothing. It was as if we were annoying pests that might go away if she just pretended that we weren’t there.
I could go on, but I won’t. Instead, I will point out that while the big, fat, inefficient behemoth of a mega-corp continues to just not get it, the nimble, innovative, customer-comes-first, newcomers are looking to expose their biggest weaknesses. JetBlue airlines started this trend: low prices, more comfortable seats, TVs in every seat, etc. But now Virgin America seems to be intending to take things to a whole new level. And this customer is very interested.
In the video below, Virgin America’s CEO gives a tour of their new planes. Modern, comfortable seating with extra leg room, standard power in every single seat on the plane (United has a few planes with power in business and first class only), USB (not sure what that’s for), ETHERNET and WiFi (!!! does this mean broadband in flight?), and my favorite: a touch screen multimedia entertainment system with satellite TV, on-demand movies, a library of over 3,000 songs with the ability to create your own playlist, video games, intra-seat social networking via chat and multiplayer games, digital shopping catalog, and an in-flight electronic ordering system for food and drinks. Awesome… The only thing that would make it better would be a friendly gate agent who doesn’t disappear, provides service with a smile, and treats me as if they’re happy to have my business.
And they’re going to donate 25% of their profits to help fight global warming.
Enjoy the tour:
on 10 Feb 2007 at 11:24 pm 1.Serge said …
I hear ya Mike… And it’s not just limited to airlines…
The guys from Engadget were able to see the actual plane in person and they’ve put a great gallery up on their site: http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/10/mega-hands-on-virgin-americas-airbus-a320-with-red-in-flight-e/
The USB port is for charging your iPod
on 11 Feb 2007 at 2:37 am 2.Campbell said …
“I needed to re-evaluate my travel options because I needed to get to DC.” Funnily enough this is exactly how Virgin started. He got stuck in some place and decided to hire a plane…..then decided to sell tickets to the others stranded.
P.S. is that video display in the seat Flash powered?
[md] They say it’s a Linux-based system and they didn’t say anything about Flash. It could be Flash, but I don’t think it is. I did ask them that question on their blog so we’ll see if they respond. [/md]
on 11 Feb 2007 at 5:47 am 3.Brandon Ellis said …
Customer service in pretty much any service industry nowadays is horrible. New York’s La Guardia and JFK are the two worst airports I’ve ever passed through in my life.
Coming back from Flash Forward in Austin last year, what would have been about 4 hours in the air (total) and a 90 min layover at JFK turned into 18 hours including sitting in JFK for 11 hours plus 90 mins of sitting on the runway. And we all got the same treatment - no communication from the airlines and staff that stared at their monitors as to not make eye contact with the customer. No wonder the airlines are tanking.
on 11 Feb 2007 at 8:40 am 4.John Dowdell said …
… I bet the United employees feel stressed too… airlines used to be a posh occupation, but staffing levels and incomes have declined the last decade, stress levels increased.
How to maintain an organization which is able to consistently focus on customer needs, rather than internal needs…?
What’s the problem with regulatory approval? Why does Virgin need centralized permission to serve customers? Is it something beyond renting gates at major airports…?
(I’ve been wondering why airlines aren’t able to experiment with things like ultra-violet anti-bacterial sweeps during cleaning… I’d pay extra for a flight with lower risk of cold & flu.)
What does Virgin need to do to open for business…?
[md] It appears that the DoT requires that 80% of your airline be owned by US citizens in order to operate a US airline in a US airport. Virgin is not willing to do that. [/md]
on 11 Feb 2007 at 9:29 am 5.Scott Fegette said …
Word, brotha. The United motto ‘fly the friendly skies’ really needs a reality check. There’s been nothing friendly about United’s service in years IMHO, Dulles is also one of the worst *airports* for customer service as well. The last time I connected through Dulles (coming from Ottawa) my experience seems to exactly mirror your own- horrid. Not a customer service agent to be found for 9 hours.
If Virgin America takes off, I’m cashing in my United frequent flyer miles (a considerable balance) and switching wholesale as well. Looking forward to airborne wifi deathmatches with you in the hopefully-near future.
[md] I’m with ya, Scott. Plus, I assume you can fly Intl on regular Virgin with the same frequent flyer number - which would be awesome. I wonder if Virgin flies to Asia or if they have a partner. [/md]
on 11 Feb 2007 at 10:57 am 6.Mark Drew said …
I have to admit, that flying Virgin Atlantic was the best flight I had, 10 hours to London from San Francisco went by really quickly with the entertainment system.
I would guess the USB port is a powered port for your iPod…
on 11 Feb 2007 at 11:15 am 7.Phillip Kerman said …
I travel less than you Mike, but I do think most airlines could do better in customer service–for sure. The Virgin CEO soungs great… I guess that’s why he’s CEO. From the looks of that video, he’s just pitching the great accommodations. Nothing about service. I’ve never flown Virgin. Maybe they’re something special. The leap that I don’t see (in your post or the letvafliy website) is why would having them in the market make things any better? (Not saying it won’t.) And… exactly what is the nature of the DOT’s rejection? And… why do they use QT for their videos on their website?
[md]
1) Virgin is renowned for great service (if not *the* best). Bringing them to the US has the promise of Virgin service on US domestic flights.
2) Having them in the market does two things: 1) gives me the option to fly them, 2) puts pressure on other airlines to improve their service and accomodations or risk losing customers to Virgin.
3) The DoT, so far as I can tell, is requiring that over 80% of Virgin America be owned by US citizens before they can operate as a US-based airline.
4) As for QT, I’m guessing that they were looking to deliver a quality higher than YouTube’s h.263 Flash video and either didn’t know how or didn’t have the tools to create a higher-quality Flash video using VP6 with a SWF and playback controls. It would be nice if a YouTube-like service started providing VP6 encoding. On2 does offer an encoding engine to do this - but that would cost money. Maybe YouTube could take a small sliver of that $1.6B and use it to actually pay for some of the software that powers their entire business.
[/md]
on 11 Feb 2007 at 2:55 pm 8.Phillip Kerman said …
What are the rules for US airlines doing business in other countries including the EU?
I just wouldn’t be so quick to say it’s a good thing. I’m not saying it’s not a good thing, but the DOT is there for a reason.
[md] Hi. I don’t know, Phillip. However, as a Poli Sci major and former Congressional Aid, I will say that arguing that, “the [government agency] is there for a reason” rarely holds any logical value. I also don’t know if the rules for US citizens owning the majority of an airline in other countries would matter much here. It’s not as though the British government is trying to launch an airline in the US while preventing the US government from launching an airline in the UK. [/md]
on 11 Feb 2007 at 4:04 pm 9.Phillip Kerman said …
Okay, I’ll give you the fact my statement (that the DOT is there for a reason) is lame. I guess I just think there’s more to it. I get very suspiciuos when a company takes their argument to the people the way Virgin is here. And their argument seems to have nothing to do with the reason for the blockage. (I really doubt, for example, the DOT doesn’t want them here because they don’t have enough USB ports.) In fact, I’d very much like more competition. Up here near PDX we have far fewer choices than you near SFO. I can only imagine what it’s like in smaller towns still.
Probably an unrelated but possibly interesting side case to this one is the fact that the US and Boeing is in constant competitition with Europe’s (goventment owned) Airbus. I have mixed feelings about the whole situation but, for sure, this is more than just a matter of buying US made cars over, say Japanese cars. Considering, for one thing, the huge Honda and Toyota plants in Ohio and Kentucky.
on 11 Feb 2007 at 10:58 pm 10.Mike Downey said …
UP
I discovered more about why Virgin America is having problems with the DoT. From their site:
[snip]
Shortly after our application was filed, incumbent legacy airlines (namely Continental, American, United, and Delta) filed the first of a wave of opposition briefs and legal motions to try to stop or slow down the DOT approval process. These carriers initially argued that the DOT should “stay the proceeding” until Virgin America and its Investors produced a any and all documents going back to the most formative stages of Virgin America, in an effort to show that, despite meeting the DOT’s formal citizenship criteria–that non-U.S. citizens hold less than 25% of our voting stocks, and that our President, and two-thirds of our managing officers and directors are U.S. citizens–we were somehow “controlled” by Virgin Group, our minority British investor. We had already provided over 1,000 pages of additional material for the DOT, which our competitors simply didn’t bother to read it before they began their legal delay tactics. Unfortunately, these tactics continued through 2006 even after the DOT declared our application “substantially complete” and reset a date for formal Answers by interested parties.
On Dec. 27, 2006, almost thirteen months after we filed our original application, the DOT issued its first substantive ruling regarding our application in a “show-cause order,” (PDF). In its “tentative” findings the Department found that the company was not owned or controlled by U.S. citizens. While we strongly disagreed with these “tentative” findings, the company and its investors responded on January 17th to all of the concerns raised by the DOT by making a number of significant changes to the structure and investment in the company. While the usual suspects immediately filed yet another “motion to stay” our regulatory review, the Department denied that motion and these opponents now have until February 13, 2007 to again try to stop our airline from flying. Based on the continuing opposition by these other airlines, we believe it will take a minimum of 30 more days of review before the Department will issue its Final Order approving our application.
This outcome however, is by no means assured, and that is why we need your help to help convince the DOT why they should approve our application and let us start service as soon as this summer.
[/snip]
http://www.letvafly.com/vaandthedot.php
on 12 Feb 2007 at 11:41 am 11.Ray Buechler said …
To me this is a matter of the U.S. based airlines being afraid of the impact Virgin America would have on their business and using old laws to try to block them from operating in the U.S. The 25% or less law was passed in 1928 and was designed to protect the fledgling airline business. There is a good article here that covers it: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/02/05/8399152/
Virgin Airlines operating in the U.S. could do nothing but benefit U.S. consumers. This is all about the U.S. airlines trying to protect their business by lobbying the politicians in D.C.
Ray
[md] I completely agree, Ray. After reading the background on this issue, it is clearly the incumbant US carriers who are trying to keep Virgin out - which makes me want Virgin in even more. They are clearly scared. They want to protect their position that allows them to provide crappy service and amenities at high prices. It’s a wonder that most of these guys are bankrupt… [/md]
on 13 Feb 2007 at 1:14 pm 12.The African Nerd said …
Seems that they used Linux for the In flight entertainment system.
see this image http://www.engadget.com/photos/mega-hands-on-virgin-americas-airbus-a320-with-red-in-flight-entertainment/156805/
any word on what the presentation layer was built in. Sure would be cool if it could be Flash
on 13 Feb 2007 at 5:32 pm 13.Phillip Kerman said …
I suspect you all are right that since it’s the us carriers putting up the stink that they don’t want the competition. The reason they’re bankrupt has little or nothing to do with them providing (unarguably) poor service. If it’s such a protected market the only explanation for them going out of biz from poor service would be that the service is so poor that people choose not to fly.
I don’t want to defend bad us airlines but I’m still suspect about this particular case. For one thing, why is it all of a sudden such a terrible law now that Virgin wants to challenge it? Aren’t there plenty of other airlines that would want to move in here?