Last week Rob and I flew to San Diego for a conference. Neither of us had flown Virgin America and we assumed it would be more expensive than Southwest since we had heard about the mood lighting, techno and text messaging. However, when we compared prices to Southwest they were the exact same price, $49 one way. We decided to fly on Branson's wings.
Southwest is in trouble.
In all fairness to the orange bird, I have only flown Southwest once or twice. My mom worked for United and I grew up flying on passes so paying for a flight was foreign to me until fairly recently. I flew SW to LA. It was like a bus. No frills. And cheap.
But what happens when you get cheap but you also get assigned seating, the Red inflight entertainment network, real headphone jacks, wifi (for which I happily paid $9.99) and great service? I guess what happens is you get some real competition.
I cannot imagine choosing to fly Southwest over Virgin America ever again.
Here's another clue that this airline might be a little bit different:
Jeff Conlon is the co-founder and CEO of IMA Interactive, an online agency located in the San Francisco Bay Area. IMA Interactive provides website design, online video production and search engine marketing services to a variety of industries both locally and nationally.
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