Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Reviewing Red: A Look at Virgin America's In Flight Entertainment
When Virgin America came to life last year, they promised a brand new flying experience, a premium low-cost experience built around purple lights and Red screens. Red, their in flight entertainment experience, is a powerful system, but still doesn't seem to work all that well - even after a year plus.
First, here's where Red shines the best. Their in flight information is among the best out there. Using Google maps, the system lets you zoom in over particular areas you are flying and seems to update fairly quickly. The best part of the system, is that the bottom pop up bar that can be used to change channels can keep the flight information available to you with just a quick swipe to the screen.
Also, you can quickly and easily order a snack or a meal through their services as well, and with 24 channels of live TV, plus a wide selection of music, movies and foreign language options makes the system very powerful.
There will be some internet connectivity, and the system is set up to have a news reader application although neither of these things are activated yet. It is a touch screen system which could be annoying, but the screens are suitably sensitive enough that tapping the screen won't bother the person in front of you.
A couple of things that need improvement though. The TV reception. On two longer flights, the reception was horrid. At times, none of the live channels got any reception for a seemingly inexplicable reason. For one flight, the satellite seemed totally out of sync as 12 of the 24 channels had 0 reception for the length of the flight. The pop up nav bar is buggy and at times will just stay in view on the screen, obscuring the lower third until you turn the TV off and turn it back on.
Also, the chat feature? Totally not used and not needed. Frankly, it would probably be a better use of system resources to offer more radio stations, games or tv stations. On the whole, the system is powerful and will grow with the airline, but there are some bugs that need correcting. Fixing them will give Virgin America one of the best in flight experiences in the sky.
First, here's where Red shines the best. Their in flight information is among the best out there. Using Google maps, the system lets you zoom in over particular areas you are flying and seems to update fairly quickly. The best part of the system, is that the bottom pop up bar that can be used to change channels can keep the flight information available to you with just a quick swipe to the screen.
Also, you can quickly and easily order a snack or a meal through their services as well, and with 24 channels of live TV, plus a wide selection of music, movies and foreign language options makes the system very powerful.
There will be some internet connectivity, and the system is set up to have a news reader application although neither of these things are activated yet. It is a touch screen system which could be annoying, but the screens are suitably sensitive enough that tapping the screen won't bother the person in front of you.
A couple of things that need improvement though. The TV reception. On two longer flights, the reception was horrid. At times, none of the live channels got any reception for a seemingly inexplicable reason. For one flight, the satellite seemed totally out of sync as 12 of the 24 channels had 0 reception for the length of the flight. The pop up nav bar is buggy and at times will just stay in view on the screen, obscuring the lower third until you turn the TV off and turn it back on.
Also, the chat feature? Totally not used and not needed. Frankly, it would probably be a better use of system resources to offer more radio stations, games or tv stations. On the whole, the system is powerful and will grow with the airline, but there are some bugs that need correcting. Fixing them will give Virgin America one of the best in flight experiences in the sky.
Labels: in-flight entertainment, travel, virgin america
Saturday, January 19, 2008
This Week In Links: Best of the Web
First, a few words about this blog. Friday, we had our 200th post ever. Which is kinda sad because this blog is over 5 years old, but its a nice milestone none the less, so congratulations to us. Since the first relaunch of this blog in May of last year, we've also welcomed over 1,000 page views - the magic number hit in the early part of January. So I hope that you are enjoying what you are reading, and please feel free to continue to do so.
In other news, crazy stuff happening with planes this past week. There was that British Airways 777 that lost power coming into Heathrow and kinda crash landed short of the runway, and then an Air Canada A319 that suffered some pretty severe turbulence. Turbulence Forecast blog has some interesting ideas about exactly what happened to the flight.
Also, less jarring avaiation news was to be had this week as well. Norwegian Air Shuttle will be offering cell phone service on their flights according to Jaunted. So, if I were you, I'd get ready for a whole host of "Guess where I'm calling from!!!" phone calls in the latter half of 2008.
One of my favorite travel writers in blogworld wonders about travel writing in newspapers, check out the thoughts from Knife Tricks.
Finally, I read this great blog post by Clearly Enlight, about travel and the battle between quality and quantity.
In other news, crazy stuff happening with planes this past week. There was that British Airways 777 that lost power coming into Heathrow and kinda crash landed short of the runway, and then an Air Canada A319 that suffered some pretty severe turbulence. Turbulence Forecast blog has some interesting ideas about exactly what happened to the flight.
Also, less jarring avaiation news was to be had this week as well. Norwegian Air Shuttle will be offering cell phone service on their flights according to Jaunted. So, if I were you, I'd get ready for a whole host of "Guess where I'm calling from!!!" phone calls in the latter half of 2008.
One of my favorite travel writers in blogworld wonders about travel writing in newspapers, check out the thoughts from Knife Tricks.
Finally, I read this great blog post by Clearly Enlight, about travel and the battle between quality and quantity.
Labels: air canada, british airways, in-flight entertainment, journalism, links, travel
