Hi y'all

I flew the first VX LAS-JFK non-stop on Sep 4 ... First Class ... seat 1D
A319 N523VA "Contents May Be Under Pressure" <-- photo link of the plane at LAS gate

Here's my trip report.
FYI ... this is my 2nd VX trip; the 1st one being a First Class seat on their 1st day of operation (Aug 8, 2007) SFO to JFK.

Check-in
Perfectly smooth ! Three Agents at the counter waiting and not another passenger in sight. Of course, I was there 2.5 hours before flight time. I passed the time away in the CO President's Club which is basically across the hall and upstairs from the VX gate (I'm an NW Worldclub member, admittance to the CO Club had nothing to do with the VX flight).

Boarding :-:
They started decorating the gate lounge with balloons about 15 minutes before boarding.
A brief announcement about being the 1st flight then a call for First Class boarding about 25 minutes before departure.
The Agent scanning boarding passes said "wait till you see what we have in-store for you on-board".
In our seats were the Entourage Air Promo items. <-- photo link of Entourage Package presented on boarding

Crew ^
The best !!
Overall great attitude. The girl doing highly animated mime during the safety briefing was starting to get annoying, but you know what ?? It did make me pay attention.
During Boarding, I started to wonder how many Flight Attendants were on this flight. One who did nothing but stand around the entry door and welcomed every passenger as they boarded did finally make an announcement about some of the details of the trip. Then he took his crew seat .. the Captain's Chair.
Bravo to VX for letting their Pilots dress like normal humans and to this Captain for acting like a human.

Service
Yes, this does follow closely with the "Crew" category above.
Overall, very friendly and upbeat.

Drink orders taken and delivered with the meal service starting immediately after the drink being served. I usually think of my 1st beverage as a "before dinner" drink, then switch to wine for my meal. I would call this a complaint, thought my travels the past couple of weeks have also seen me in First Class cabins of DL and CO ... same pattern. Is NW the only airline doing "before dinner" drinks

On this flight, as well as my previous VX trip, the Flight Attendant disappeared after dinner. Perhaps it takes all of them to "stand in waiting" to fullfill orders via "Red" as soon as they are placed ?? Perhaps First Class is also expected to order service requests via "Red" ?? They did check in on us about once an hour, so in the end I was well attended to, but I do find this service pattern to be very odd. I'm used to the First Class F/A assisting in Coach but more like a "back and forth" and not "I'm outta here, I'll check back in an hour".

Dinner
Lame. Absolutely lame.
Perhaps I had my expectations set too high following last year's SFO-JFK trip on VX.
But I had read here on FlyerTalk how the meal service had been downgraded, so I don't hink I'm biased here.

The appetizer was the olive/tomato/feta cheese thing. No complaints here.
Very tasty and a nice way to start the service. It was also served on a canape tray versus you selecting from small plastic ramekins of food from a cardboard tray.

For my entree, I was given the choice of the BBQ Chicken Salad or the pasta (I don't remember the description). The 3rd option of some type of "duck salad" that I've heard about here was not offerred.

I chose the BBQ Chicken Salad as did the girl seated next to me.
One of these days, my thick Texan brain will learn that most folks in the USA are clueless about what constitutes "BBQ"
The chicken breast on this salad was cold. BBQ is served hot.
The chicken was not BBQ'd, it was grilled. There is an extreme difference. Grilling outdoors is NOT the definition of BBQ (I'm not saying this chicken was grilled outdoors, but it was made to look like such as most other commercial preparations would do).

Ok .. the definition of "BBQ" aside ...
Horrible. Absolutely horrible.
The chicken was dry and flavorless. The bed of "salad" it was served on wasn't much more than standard iceberg lettuce with a few carrot srtips thrown in. And the lettuce was half wilted. The ensemble came with one package of ranch dressing. Not nearly enough to counteract the dry meat. No other sides served with this entree. Dry chicken on wilted lettuce. Period.

Dessert ^ ^ ^
Back to the familiar plastic cups on a cardboard tray selection. There were 3 to choose from. I took one of each.
Sinful. Absolutely sinful.
I say sinful, but I don't remember them (it's caused by drinking Rum-n-Cokes thru dinner versus having wine !!).

One had a chocolately-coconut pudding taste and was wonderful.

The other I only remember as being extremely good, but not as good as the chocolately-coconut pudding thingy.

The 3rd was supposed to be a "Smore". I tried to to eat it as such. I tried to get my marshmallow onto my graham cracker. I used my knife at 1st. But the 'mallow' stuck to the knife. So I used the fork to try and get if off the knife. Half stayed stuck to the knife, the other half stuck to the fork. Neither the 'mallow' portion on the knife nor fork would "roll off" onto the cracker. So the thumb comes into play. Oooops, bad idea. Let's just use this finger here... Arghhh !! It's a good thing I'm in row 1 and the F/A isn't around to watch me thru the purple plexiglass wall. The marshmallow sticks to anything and everything except the graham cracker. And I still have the chocolate flakes to add !! Screw it. Knife fork, fingers and cracker go into mouth. Quickly followed by a "chaser" of chocolate flakes. I enjoyed it anyhow (but not as much as the chocolately-coconut pudding thingy).

Snacks
Did you say "snacks" ??
None were offered (and none were asked for). When I saw my "chilled chicken served on a bed of lettuce wilted over a grill" my 1st thought was that I'd have to hit the Coach offerings before we got to New York. As it turned out, I was satisfied (a combination of being tired from "drinking Rum-n-Cokes thru dinner versus switching to wine" and "fighting the giant Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters").

Red
I hear all these bad reports. On both of my VX flights it has worked just fine.

Entourage Class
I've already included a pic of the goodies that were waiting for us in our seats.
One "Entourage Class" goodie that was never offered was the champange.
Having the other goodies in our seat on boarding made a great first impression but was quickly followed with a thought of "what do I do with all this stuff" ? It wasn't an easy answer when combined with the limited carry-on storage in VX's First Class cabin. After packing away the "take away" gifts I was still faced with where to put the blanket. It stayed wrapped in it's plastic bag and wedged between me & my seat until after takeoff. It came out of the bag once airborne and served as a pad on my footrest. While I didn't use it as a blanket, I noticed it was very soft & plush. Was black with fake wool backing and had "Entourage" embrodiered in red on the front.

The Kiehl's package looks very nice and will be in Mom's Stocking this Christmas.
The tin of Altoids were "Creme de Menth". I haven't tried them yet but usually like Altoids.
Godiva Truffles. No additional expalnation needed.
Entourage Eye Mask. A simple little promo item.

The noise cancelling headsets were passed out after takeoff (not until after the seat belt sign was off, so it was well into flight before we got to use them). They were the Bose "over the ear" style. Being that we were the 1st to use them, they were still in their factory box & wrapping. The F/A opened the cardboard boxes then handed us the headphone in their hard shell case. On opening the case we found all the cords etc still in original factory packing. After distributing them, the F/A and most of us in First (err.. Entourage..) Class were left trying to figure out how to operate the things. The biggest challenge was with installing the battery. I personally own a set of the "on the ear" style, but their battery is no-where close to how these sets operated. Once we had it figured out, the Bose headsets were (as always) a blessing.

After completing my 1st movie on Red ( "21" ), I searched for the Entourage episodes. This is a program I actually like, but somehow managed to miss the entire season last year. I was hoping to catch-up some on this flight before the new season started. Not one episode on Red. Nada. I asked the F/A on one of his visits from Coach and he said the programming had not been uploaded yet.

First Flights
I was also hit with the same issue as when I flew VX eastbound on their 1st day of operation.
All parties were on the westbound sector. Odd for an airline that is technically based on the West Coast.
And I didn't know this on either trip until after booking my eastbound journey. Oh Well. I had great trips both times anyhow.

Summary @:-)
Good Airline. Wonderful employee attitude. Best Domestic First Class seats in the USA.
For me personally (PHX based), they just don't "work" for me yet. I will probably continue to go out of my way (to LAX/SFO/SAN/LAS) once a year as I did with this trip just to fly them. I'd like to do it more often, but when I can get free upgrades on NW and (tho probably ending next year ) CO then it gets a little hard to justify paying extra in time and $$$ to go out of my way for VX. The equation swings more away from VX if they continue to downgrade service like they did with the meals. The equation will swing back to their favor as they expand; however, with the fuel situation, I wonder how fast any expansion would be ?
For now, they can't be my preferred carrier, but they will definitely stay on my radar screen.

Steve