This will be great for pax looking for cheap transcons from Philly -- which have been drying up of late as CO/UA hasn't been "retaliating" against US as much. Virgin likes to do many cheapo sales on their transcons, although I'm not sure they can get to $99 these days, given the price of fuel.

Of course, the service is almost 100% certain to fail, so enjoy it while you can. Virgin is one of the few remaining airlines in the USA that lacks a sound business plan. They're almost never made money, and this move won't help them. Look for US to add a little capacity in the market, match the Virgin fares on a limited basis, retain almost all the high yielding business traffic, and slowly convince Virgin to reduce service and then pull out of the market (assuming that other losses doesn't cause Virgin to go Chap. 11 before this cycle completes itself).

That said, everyone I've ever put on Virgin has generally been happy -- the service is better than on the legacies. If you've got friends and family who don't play the ff game, encourage them to use them. For all the talk though, I'm sure very few of us will ever fly Virgin; we'll take the low fares and stick with US. It's the never ending story of why you don't want to compete against a legacy carrier at their fortress hub.

BTW, one of Virgin's first huge problems here is that they're adding way too much capacity. Three nonstops to LAX and two to SFO? UA has had problems filling up ONE small plane on these routes. Virgin's going to have to be close to $99 to fill those babies up. And, of course, they will be massively unprofitable at those levels. Reduce frequencies and their service becomes non-competitive for biz travellers. The same old story.