The release came out this morning saying that Virgin America was starting ticket sales today. Woohoo! I remember over three years ago trying to get a job with the airline out of grad school. It’s hard to believe it’s taken this long for them to actually fly.

Oh, but all is not well in Virginland (no, that’s not the latest land at Disneyland). The center of their sales universe is their website, and it is not doing so well.

Looks like someone didn’t anticipate the huge traffic numbers and now they’re struggling with really slow response times on the javascript-heavy site. I was trying to get more information and potentially book a ticket, but I cannot for the life of me get any further into the reservations process than the initial availability screen without seeing this:

Booooo! You guys should have known better. I know other potential customers are having the same issue. A friend even went over to Orbitz to buy a ticket even though there was a fee attached.

Once I can get onto the website, I’ll write up a lot more about the airline. Flights begin August 8 from San Francisco to both JFK and LAX.

UPDATE 7/19 @ 132p: Well, the site is officially dead now, and they have a pretty picture to prove it. I may be down in LA, but I think I can hear their IT guy getting yelled out from here.

Kind of strange that you won’t be able to call anyone at Virgin America until 8a if you’re on the East Coast, no? That’s especially bad since they have a 7a flight out of JFK.

UPDATE 7/19 @ 420p: Hooray, they’re back up! Not quite sure what’s going on as I seem some funny stuff in the reservations system (showing flights twice, once saying “sold out”), but at least it’s working.