nsx

I saw the Time article today and came over and read this excellent thread.

WN's coach product is in the process of being devalued noticeably, with the new, compressed "Evolve" seating: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...knee-room.html

Southwest presumably came to the same conclusion before deciding to add a row of seats to its 737-700's.

I sure hope VX stays in business and keeps offering great sale prices between LAX and SFO. That's where my best fares on WN come from! Within California, Southwest has not been the low fare leader for many years.

grt2106

[QUOTE=nsx;19594497]I saw the Time article today and came over and read this excellent thread.



WN's coach product is in the process of being devalued noticeably, with the new, compressed "Evolve" seating: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/south...knee-room.html

I think WN's coach products value isn't in the planes themselves but in the flexibility in their product and incredibly fair policies in bookings.

worldwidedreamer

I'm a mid-tier UA elite who lives in SF. I've loved the Virgin brand since I was a kid and feel VA offers the best overall airline experience in the US. In a perfect world I would choose VA for every flight; in reality I almost always choose UA.

Here is why I stick with UA: my wife is from Wisconsin and my work travel brings me to Asia. Neither VX or its partners fly to Wisconsin or Asia. From SFO my choices are DL/AS or UA/US; for domestic travel I could also choose WN.

VX needs to learn how to play nice with others. It could partner with Frontier and Hawaiian in the US, Hainan Airlines in Asia, Emirates and Etihad in the Middle East. With a limited network and few partners it can really only be the choice of folks who visit just SF/LA/NY/LV.

eponymous_coward

OK, so you're seriously asserting that VX was going to get hordes of VS passengers who'd be thrilled to fly LHR-SFO/LAX-ORD/MCO/DFW?

Do you not see the problem here- that most VX destinations from SFO/LAX already have nonstop VS service that doesn't require backtracking?

My point is that connecting passengers from partners played next to zero role in WN and B6's success (and that is basically what VX is trying to replicate), and an argument that somehow a bunch of Australians and Brits were going to save the bacon of a USA airline based in California (and that didn't fly outside the USA for the first few years of its existence, and even now is just flying to Mexico, which isn't likely to take a lot of VS/VA connecting traffic) is just silly. I've already gone into why nobody else was going to partner with them: VX basing themselves in SFO/LAX and trying to poach JFK traffic means that any DL/UA/AA alliance partner pairing up with VX is giving a giant middle finger to their USA alliance partner, because JFK-California is a milk cow route for the legacies, high RASM routes full of investment bankers and movie stars. If you're, say, LH, BA or AF/KL, why are you going to go out of your way to be deliberatively offensive to a partner? What do you get out of it? It's not like you don't have JFK-California coverage from a partner, now, is it?

So, basically, I think the idea that VX needed partners to succeed is bogus. VX was never going to get anything more than a tiny amount of business from partners because they chose SFO and LAX as hubs, which get service from pretty much every point on planet Earth. AS gets lots of partners because they cover a lot of regions their partners do not want to fly to, but it's useful to have some partner to handle the occasional connecting traffic: Alaska and third-tier Pacific NW markets. VX is based where everyone flies to. Nobody needs VX to handle the last segment from SFO to ORD the same way AS would be useful to fly the last segment to JNU or BOI.

As for what do I think VX should do? Invest in a time machine and persuade their past selves to knock off with the stupid route decisions seems to me to be all they can do- I think they are toast after blowing through more than a half billion in VC (through TWO rounds of capital) and still not being close to break-even. If they can't get break-even soon they will be gone. In my opinion they should have been more aggressive with places like DFW, ORD, PHL, maybe adding in MSP/ATL, instead of dinking around with YYZ and SNA. They needed to capture more mindshare in places where people fly. If they were going to lose money for the first couple of years, at least lose it in the right places. Wasting time with stations that don't make sense was silly.

Which still includes free checked luggage and changes (something VX doesn't offer).

tuolumne

...Back in the early/mid 00s when VA was being dreamt up, UAL Corp. was in the midst of it's Ch.11 reorganization. There was widespread sentiment in some industry circles that UA was going to go belly up and cease operations, especially from the boys in Houston, who wanted to poach some of the lucrative assets to beef up their geographically limited operation (that's another story).

Point is, a UA implosion at SFO would have granted VA significant strategic advantages at the perfect time. Unfortunately, SFO is still not only home to UAL, but UAL is now the world's largest airline, replete with the network, schedule, and award/redemption offerings VA could frankly only dream of. They're going to need a miracle.

tonywestsider

Mike_K

Virgin doesn't do itself any favors with it's frequent flyer program or it's customer support. It's tragically ironic that a company this "hip" so completely misses the target with customer service. I don't understand why companies decide to cut corners in arguably the one area (aside for their actual product) that customers will use to form their opinion.

I remember my first flight with VA. It was when their website wasn't working because of the new reservation system. I could not get ahold of them. The site said it would be fixed soon. Months later, it was still broken and I found out that at the time of my initial booking it had already been broken for months.

My initial concern was maintenance of aircraft. How can I trust a company that can't get a website working over the course of many months to properly maintain a flying tube full of people?

Now with respect to the actual product... It's awesome. I fly VX generally once a month and it's just the best coach experience there is as far as I'm concerned. Likewise with domestic first class...

I haven't flown another airline for close to a year but I have a metric ton of Avios points and wanted to go to Hawaii so I just flew AA yesterday. It amazes me that people still fly with these people. Were it not for the network/ routes and FF programs I just can't fathom a reason to pick AA or UA over VX. My first leg (ORD to LAX) was a 737 that was really long in the tooth. No legroom, shared entertainment, broken audio jacks, just a mess. The second leg (LAX to HNL) was a 757 that was worse. The exit sign was hanging off, the old CRT TV's that hung in the main aisle had been upgraded to LCD panels but still... you're charging a premium for this product and one might argue that Hawaii is a premium route... Isn't this where you put your best foot forward?

VX has a lot of details to work out but I'll gladly deal with them because what they're offering me for the money is exponentially better than the competition. As a real consumer, I think it's just a matter of expanding their network so they can better compete.

So the question at the end of the day is are they losing money because they have a bad business model or are they losing money because they're systematically expanding? If it's the latter than there's much less cause for concern. If it's the former than yeah, you can worry.

skimthetrees

I flew VX F last month SFO-> MCO on a Saturday morning. 4 out of 8 F seats occupied. 0 out of 8 assigned before T-6 and all of the 4 assigned F seats were filled with upgraders within a couple of minutes after T-6.

The flight was scheduled for 9:45 AM Saturday morning and since I had no clue what the demand would be for F (coach was almost completely booked, only a handful of empty seats) and I really wanted the F upgrade I set the alarm and got up to check-in online at 3:45 AM in the morning (T-6) to snag an F seat. I got it. Unfortunately I had never flown VX F before and forgot to check Seatguru so I picked an aisle in row 1 even though all seats were open at 3:45 AM. It turns out row 1 has a little restricted legroom. Not too bad considering I was the only person in row 1, everyone else selected row 2. I checked the seat availability a couple of minutes after I checked in (after I consulted Seatguru) with the idea of switching seats but by then, maybe 3:50 AM, both aisles and one window were occupied in row 2. It was a great flight though having the whole row to myself. Gate Agent made a couple of announcements before boarding to solicit upgrades to F but no takers although there were a couple of people walking on board who had second thoughts when they so how nice the F seats looked.

The flight I took to MCO on a Saturday was almost entirely leisure travelers going to Disney World who mostly didn't seem to care about an F upgrade.

eponymous_coward

OK, then suggest something plausible.

I submit there's little plausible reason for anyone to partner with an LCC that has VX's basic network structure. There's simply no value to adding partner connections to ORD from SFO/LAX if you already fly to ORD.

Now, if someday VX had an analogous position at SFO to B6 at JFK (tons of local destinations where you can get some realistic feed from), and UA completely retreated out of serving those places from SFO/DEN the way AA did out of JFK, then I see a plausible case that VX would enhance someone's network. But right now? Not so much. So it's a "build it and they will come" scenario, but not for years (it took a decade of good growth and profits to make AA and B6 partner up).

They're somewhat better out of LAX because they can partner with VA, but only somewhat: for instance, one of the most popular places Australians like to go out of LAX is LAS. Whoops, VX doesn't serve that route... which is why VA is partnering with DL as well, who does.

Sounds about right.

tonywestsider

dhuey

Really? I could see that with regard to B6 (more space, great IFE, leather seats), but WN? Nothing against Southwest -- I'm fine with them. But I don't see it as a superior product. I would agree that their free bags and no-change-fee policies often result in a better deal than legacy coach, however.

eponymous_coward

32 inch pitch (legacies are sometimes at 30" or 29" ). Leather seats. No fees for things people want to do (cancel or change flights in advance/cash in awards).

It's clearly a better coach product for people who don't care about international travel and don't have shiny DYKWIA cards.

dhuey

It looks like we have a little different idea about what the Southwest product is. I fully agree with you that the baggage and change fee policies are great. I think of those things as affecting the price, not the product. When it comes to the experience in the aluminum tube, however, I don't think there's much difference between Southwest and the legacy carriers.

FWAAA

Perhaps you didn't read post #61 by nsx; 32 inch pitch is history on the 73Gs as WN rolls out its new slimmer seats at 31 inch pitch (so it can cram an extra row on the 73Gs) instead of the former 32 inches. In addition, recline has been reduced by one-third (2 inches instead of the former 3 inches). The 738s will still feature 32 inch pitch. No decision on whether the Classics will get the new seats (and more of them).

http://blog.apex.aero/cabin-interior...er-2500-seats/

I'm not sure I've ever seen 29" or 30" pitch on any legacy (UA, DL, AA or US) mainline plane - but there are some RJs or turboprops flown on behalf of legacies that might feature 29" or 30" pitch.

All in all, the WN product may still be superior after the re-pitch, but it won't be due to the industry-average 31 inch seat pitch.

eponymous_coward

http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/US_...ng_737-400.php