farnkly, i was surprised with my f class experience on vx.http://www.flyertalk.com/confused.gif i was excited to experience the vx product. pics look great. reviews sounded good. i think one has to go into it realizing: this is a budget carrier, the first class product is very much budget:

vx 318 lax to jfk - 12/20: no lounge. no priority with baggage. seats are nice. IFE is excellent. but you are NOT really in a separate cabin. The entire flight people pass through the cabin to use the lav. Constantly. If you're an isle this is an additional annoyance.

vx 313 jfk to lax 12/25. this is where it got bad for me. bumped to coach. yep i said it. the manager at jfk was super polite and apologized. tried to explain that they "needed" the seats for a "good reason" but was not "allowed" to explain. i thought it would be a criminal transport, a heart, a very ill individual. Nope, got on and it was just some lady and her husband. VX is refunding that leg to me plus a $500 voucher. Don't want a voucher and i plan on discussing this with them. Don't wish to use their product ever again. It just simply is not a real first class product... even for the price. They should convert the seats to coach. its fine for coach. FAs were very polite. Loved them. Its vx corporate i am really disappointed with. If you want to attract people to F class you can not do this. I booked way way back even before the route was traveled. I am an Elevate "founding member". Me and my wife were looking forward to traveling F round trip. Very very disappointing to have to cram into coach. If we knew we would have arranged for slightly more money on a "real" carrier... even united p.s. business. (yes, i've read about their lav problems but it still sounds way better).

by the way, seats were open on the flight. Not a full flight. Today, the 26th, is a much more heavily trafficked time of year. Airport was not at all crowded on 25th... which is why we traveled then... expecting things like this not to happen.

Wow, sounds like an aberration to me based on personal experience and comments from many others. But I can see why that experience would sour you on any airline.

The only negative I've experienced is the lack of FCL and the occasional confused gate agent (mainly SFO).

To me, that was more than offset by the extraordinarily friendly and pleasant FA's, counter staff, comfy seats, mood lighting and IFE, not to mention the bargain $499 SFO-JFK fare.

My experience has been so positive that I've actually gone out of my way to try to fly them. Since CO drops their seasonal evening CLE-SFO NS, I fly CLE-LAS and then walk a few gates over and pick up the VX LAS-SFO. Faster and more comfy than connecting in IAH.

for a couple hundred bucks more you get AA. similar and lounge access. I wanted vx to succeed. wanted to be one of the first to discover them amongst fliers i know. sorry. won't recommend.

Personally, I'd rather fly VX coach ($149 plus $25 for the bulkhead or exit rows) or UA's P.S. C than AA's two class F on their "let's see if we can jam six 18.5" coach seats across the front of our 763s, add extra leg room and a recline, call it F and maybe nobody will notice" planes.

AA First - 18.5"
http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Ame...ng_767-300.php
VX Coach - 19.7"
http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Vir...irbus_A320.php

Now if you mean AA's F on a 3 class plane, maybe... as long as you don't get an LGA crew on a holiday weekend. But that can cost nearly $2,000 more each way

So sorry to read you had a bad trip. I, too, would be pretty upset if I was downgraded to coach without so much as a reasonable explanation.

What was the load factor in the coach section? Reason I ask is because we had absolutely no "walk through traffic" from coach into the first class section to use the restroom, etc. I wonder if the load factor in coach was high on your flight which could explain (?) the traffic in the first class section?

As to VX being a budget first class, I'll gladly settle for lack of linens, ice cream sundaes, etc in lieu of the fantastic seats, RED IFE and terrific attitude of their employees. But I respect your opinion, shadabing.

A favor, please: Please report back on the outcome of your debate with VX corporate regarding the $500 voucher you're not interested in. It's pretty much unanimous the in-flight and counter/gate crews are very customer focused, so it will be very helpful if you report the outcome of your dealings with VX corporate. Thank you in advance!

Again, sorry to read of a downgrade first to coach ... on Christmas ... of all days!

Shadabing,

One more question......

On a different thread you asked whether the 9:25am LAX-JFK and 3:15pm JFK-LAX would be breakfast/brunch and dinner flights, respectively. Can you confirm/deny/enlighten/elaborate ?

well, if you are still into their F product... breakfast was served. don't know about the return since i was moved to coach. i'm pretty sure they had a meal too.

Thanks, and, yes, we're still into their F product.

Keep us posted as to the outcome with VX corporate! ^

whatever the outcome, VX will have to change how they handle this, terrible customer service

Air travel is fundamentally about making people feel important, and you can't downgrade someone with such a weak explanation. I would have guessed it was a FAM, but either way, of course you were going to check once on board, and they needed to come up with something better than "I'm not allowed to tell". That's the kind of line you'd get with UA, US, etc.

Their FAs are very good, and their service is much better than the legacies, but first class = expectations, and they're not going to meet them if they can't work out these sorts of situations in a way that doesn't make the downgradee feel like someone more important is getting his seat.

The downgrade is horrible, especially since by that time, the rows with extra legroom space are almost certainly gone. They should have also offered you totally free IFE, food, etc., in addition to vouchers.

Nonetheless, although I have been a critic of VX F, I think the OP is doing it somewhat of an injustice. I would call it equivalent to typical domestic F on a mainline carrier with the possible exception of service such as UA ps F or even UA ps C. However, VX F is a lot cheaper than typical UA ps C prices on the same route.

It is true that F passengers do not get exclusive use of the front lav on VX and we did have traffic through to it, but that didn't bother me too much since on many mainline carriers, FAs are too lazy to enforce it domestically anyhow.

Incidentally, VX F is rarely, if ever, $499 for SFO-JFK these days, more like $699.

The person who you saw sitting in the F seat that had previously been yours was not necessarily the reason you were bumped to coach. This sounds like a classic FAM bump. The FAM, however, did not sit in your seat, but elsewhere. Now, who knows how they decide who to bump when a FAM decides to sample the VX F product. It may well have been arbitrary and unfair that they picked you instead of either the lady or her husband, or someone else.

what is FAM? if its some corporate person from the airlines... don't think that's the case. i overheard her (the wife of the couple that got my seats) conversation at the baggage. she is just someone's mom. i was told by the manager at the terminal that it had to be our seats. they specifically came looking for me at the gate just as we were arriving there. then they broke the news to me.

i gotta say... their way of downgrading (even though i liked all the agents i spoke with) was a bit humiliating. you can't offer a product like this (as someone in an earlier reply pointed out) and be irresponsible with it. they should have offered to rebook me in first on another carrier at their expense. Or offer me a free flight in first... not some vouchers that don't cover a first round trip (as was pointed out also... each leg on vx is more like 699 in first). How does a new carrier win over customers like this? they don't.

FAM = Federal Air Marshall

http://www.tsa.gov/lawenforcement/programs/fams.shtm

got it. Look, perhaps air marshalls have great covers. i hope they do and that i could never tell. I'd never want to compromise that. Let them have the whole first class. No problem.

I was told specifically it was my seats that were needed. i can strong arm stuff. the vx guy at jfk said he was really frustrated but could not specifically discuss it... he said it was only those two seats. really odd... or a great lie. Either way... i expect a real compensation. They can cancel the flight for mechanical reasons. They can have a seat physically broken and no one use it. They can overbook and try to figure out how to provide equal service. They CAN NOT sell me a product that they pushed and pushed to get me to try and then pull the carpet out from under me without compensation that says "we at vx take responsibility".

i've e-mailed the vx contact i was given. so far... nothing.

Sounds like a classic FAM case to me.

Flying as much as I do I know their patterns (anyone that's remotely observent can figure it out), but in the interest of not being blacklisted by the Fed. Gov't. I'm not going to post more.

What probably happened is the couple that occupied your seats were moved there to accommodate the FAM seating. They weren't the FAM's themselves, but were just asked if they minded moving from row 3 to row 2 (or whatever the case was) and they said "sure".

Why it was you that was downgraded and not them? Not sure what formula VX uses. Could be fare paid, could be time of check-in, YTD EQM's, whatever. Or it could just be bad luck.