You guys know I can be pretty harsh on Virgin America, but I have to say, I really like their latest promotion. I received it last night not only from Virgin, but also from two other people before the original had even landed in my inbox. 
That tells me it’s got some buzzworthiness to it.
What’s the deal? Wednesday night is Superfly party night. Seriously. The airline is calling it an online happy hour in the sky with two free drinks per person, and even some after hours partying once you arrive. The airline has designated four flights on each of the next five Wednesdays as follows:
VX 313 JFK-LAX leaving at 505p
VX 1839 SFO-LAX leaving at 6p
VX 1777 SFO-LAS leaving at 715p
VX 1852 LAX-SFO leaving at 355p
If you’re onboard, you’ll get free drinks, they’re encouraging use of chat rooms in their inflight entertainment system, and once you land, your boarding pass will get you in to some local hotspots.
So why do I like this? Well, Wednesdays are typically slow days, so might as well try to convince some twenty-somethings to hop on board and have a good time. It also does a good job of setting the vibe of the airline. Most importantly, the uniqueness of the promo makes it buzzworthy. It won’t generate a ton of money, but it will get publicity. It also doesn’t cost them much, and that’s important. Nice work.
And now, on an unrelated note. I received a lot of feedback that you liked Benet’s guest post while I was gone. She’s told me that she’ll have her latest version of “Strange but True Airport News” up on Towers and Tarmacs this afternoon. So head on over if you’re interested.
8 comments on “Virgin America Superfly Wednesdays”
My experience flying 4x with Virgin (out of Seattle to and from SFO, LAS and LAX) is that they are appealing to the 20-30ish hipster set, so this promotion makes a lot of sense.
That, and, having bought $50 upgrades to F on a lot of my flights, I’ve run into a number of Alaska elites like myself in F. They are UNIFORMLY impressed with VX first class, and they all say they want to give Virgin their business. Granted, the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “data”, so I’m not sure how far to extrapolate this, but given that their SEA-SFO frequencies are going up, they may be on to something.
Two or three drunk hipsters can ruin your whole flight.
Sweet!
Pretty soon VX will have Super SUPER Fly Wednesday night flights. When the Captain turns off the fasten seat belt sign, all the seats will fold into the floor and a DISCO ball will come out. Dance party!
Not sure why you are so down on Virgin America- pretty sure I’ve never ridden on a nicer plane with more well behaved passengers. Their entertainment system is genious- makes everyone isolate themselves in their own personal bubble (which is a wonderful thing in such tight quarters). Also don’t have to keep checking where that pesky serving cart is to see if you can go to the bathroom since it is only there for a short time in the beginning of the flight.
I sincerely hope Virgin America takes over the entire U.S. airline industry, I think it is a great example of what the flying service should be all about.
It’s not that I’m down on VX’s product at all. In fact, I quite like it. I’m just down on their prospects for success. If you’d like to know more about my thoughts, here is the archive of my Virgin America posts.
Over weight lugage in San Francisco (SFO)
IAN (I think employee# 135101) from first class was checking us in San Francisco (SFO).
There was two of us with ONE 75 pound lugage.
So, I stepped aside to re-packed it, then weighed 68 pounds. Only to be hassle again and then asked to weigh my carry on.
The carry-on weighed 35 pound for two of us.
The pushy IAN forced us to check our carry-on in because that too was overwieght. Split between two people would have been 17.5 pounds easily.
My Question is “Did IAN have a bad day with his boy friend or girl friend?”
Doing a job you don’t like is worse than losing your job.