reDesign

Today marks the second anniversary of the launch of Virgin America, an upstart carrier that has inspired many loyal followers. Virgin America is a clear example of the benefits of starting from scratch.

Among Virgin’s features:

• Brand new planes.
• Cheerful gate staff and flight attendants.
• AC power plugs at every seat.
• In-flight WiFi on every seat on every flight.
• Live TV.
• The best in-flight entertainment system on a domestic carrier.
• The best premium economy offering (Main Cabin Select) in the U.S.
• The best domestic first class, with the exception of three-cabin transcontinental offerings like United’s p.s. It even rivals some U.S. carriers’ international business class offerings.
• In-seat, on-screen food ordering.
• Specialty food choices.
• A simple frequent flier program with no redemption restrictions.

Virgin America is the airline I’d design if I were designing an airline from scratch. It solves the needs of today’s travelers.

The legacy airlines can’t come close to Virgin’s offering. Retrofitting aircraft is expensive and many carriers are facing liquidity crunches. Union rules make it next to impossible to fire rude and bitter flight attendants. Bureaucratic processes and lethargy prevent innovations like Virgin’s IFE system (see my post Could YouTube have come from a large company?) To the extent that Virgin America has a legacy, it’s the halo from Virgin’s fun, irreverent brand and Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group. (see video below)

On most airlines I complain about things like surly flight attendants, seats held together with duct tape, dirty planes, long mechanical delays and shabby terminal facilities. On Virgin America the complaints are in a different (and whiny) league: the IFE system has some bugs in it, seat-to-seat chat needs status messages, in-flight WiFi can sometimes be slow. The only substantive complaint I’ve had so far is that the Web site is incredibly slow and painful to use.

I’m not the only one who has noticed: Virgin’s load factor has been steadily increasing, even as it has expanded capacity. Virgin’s flights often sell out before those on legacy carriers on the same routes.

Virgin came into the market at a really tough time for the industry, with record oil prices last year and the toughest economy in decades. Here’s hoping Virgin America makes it to its 20th birthday.

It’s rare these days that a company impresses with customer service. It’s even rarer when that company is an airline, especially an American airline. That’s the experience I had last week when I was flying home from New Orleans on United Airlines.

It started out pretty awful. A few hours before my flight I received a text message that my flight was delayed. Then another. By the time I arrived at the airport, my originating flight had been delayed more than two hours, ensuring that I’d miss my connecting flight in Denver. As it got close to the new departure time, we were told that there was a mechanical issue. After a string of “we’re waiting for an update” announcements, we finally boarded three hours later when a new plane arrived.

Based on experience, I was braced for the worst when I arrived in Denver: a 90 minute wait for a harried customer service rep who would look for every excuse to not put me up for the night. Before leaving New Orleans, I’d tweeted “United already knows who will misconnect. What are the odds they’ll be proactive and have hotel vouchers waiting?” I would’ve placed them at 1000:1, best case.

But that’s exactly what happened. After we landed the gate agent came on board and announced that they had prepared packets with hotel and meal vouchers for everyone who was stranded. Three people were staffing the desk, despite the fact that we arrived around 2 a.m. They were polite and directed us to the hotel shuttles.

Within 20 minutes of landing in San Francisco the next day, there was an apology in my email box for the inconvenience. A link in the email invited me to select from a list of appreciation items, including a $250 travel certificate.

The immediacy and the proactive nature of the response made a very positive impression. It’s great to see companies using IT in this way.

Every couple of months, U.S. Airways sends out an email describing the progress on their computer systems. As with most large-scale systems projects, they’re behind. The self-effacing emails try to reassure customers that the airline really cares. Here’s an excerpt from June:

Welcome again to the latest edition of the Merger Update, where we provide the plain English scoop on issues important to you, our frequent travelers. No corporate double speak; just a rundown of details on the most pressing questions of the day.

So, first things first. You may be weary of us apologizing for the tough times we had this spring due to the migration of our reservations system, but here it is: We sincerely apologize for the numerous failures. After a pretty nice start to the merger we’ve learned some tough lessons through all this and received some very helpful advice from many of you, some of which we’re applying already and some of which is unprintable. So thank you for sticking with us as we climb back on the horse.

OK, enough groveling, here’s what we’ve got…

I hadn’t really paid much attention to the emails. But they stuck in my head last night. As I mentioned earlier, I spent seven hours at National Airport on Sunday, partly because of U.S. Airways ill-considered policy of not allowing phone agents to help with day-of-flight issues. Last night I called U.S. Airways to rebook my trip.

When I explained what I wanted to do, the agent replied “You were a no show.” This despite the fact that I twice had my boarding pass scanned and actually sat on the plane. While she offered to waive the $100 change fee, she wanted to charge an extra $100 for the difference in fare. When I said that I wanted a refund because my flight was canceled, she put me on hold while she contacted a supervisor. (Airlines try to hide the fact that you are entitled to a refund if they cancel your flight.)

Her supervisor comes on the line and tells me that she can’t find any record of my flight being canceled and that my record said that I was a no show. So she couldn’t do anything for me.

How does an airline not know that they didn’t operate a flight? That the plane sat on the tarmac for 6 hours? That they canceled a good portion of their schedule that day? Fortunately I had thought ahead about the possibility and printed the Web flight status showing the cancellation when I got home on Sunday. I faxed that to her while still on the phone.

A few minutes later she comes back on the line slurping her drink and grumpily proceeds to rebook my flight for free. No apologies.

Next week, I’ll be taking pictures every time I sit on one of their planes.