Virgin America First Class to Las Vegas

VX First Class
SFO New Terminal 2
New SFO Admirals Club
Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas
July 2011

A quick overnight trip to LAS and this was an easy choice... UA, US or VX. Duh! Even easier since VX offers a discounted F fare of only $500 RT vs. the lowest Y fare of just over $400 and a US/UA F fare of more than $800 RT. Yeah right. VX.com offers a very user friendly website that shows all flights for the day with lowest prices in each cabin, and instantly displaying available seats in each cabin.

It's been a couple of years since I flew VX and was really looking forward to seeing SFO's new T2. OLCI was easy and we drove from the city and parked right beside the T2 door on Level 1 of the SFO underground garage. Priority security had only a couple of pax and a most friendly Team SFO doc checker. First time in T2 and it is now the class of SFO terminals. Nice eye pleasing and open feel.

First stop was the new AA Admirals Club. I'd heard nice things about it and it is indeed a gem. Of course the old T3 AC was so small and dated that anything would have been better. But this AC is beautiful.

Great shops and restaurant/food options.

Unfortunately, someone neglected to go to the bathroom earlier so we arrived at the gate after boarding had commenced, leaving us at the back of the pack and in line to board.

VX 912
SFO-LAS
3:50P-5:20P
A 319
July 28, 2011

The purple mood lighting of the V cabin is very attractive and the VX First Class seat is one of the nicest narrow body seats in the domestic skies with 55" pitch. The cabin is completely separate from the main cabin. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the VX First cabin as with most A319/A320s is that the galley in a part of the First Class cabin, with fully exposed catering carts and containers.

Call me old fashioned but the folksy, comedy routine of the inflight announcement followed by the juvenile "We're all in this together" rap gets really old, really quickly. Very annoying. But the "forward lavatory is strictly reserved for our First Class passengers" was a welcomed announcement.

Personal young FA David greeted us and offer PDBs. After take-off, David took our drink orders and offered a "cheese plate". Mrs. SFO declined the cheese plate (or so she thought) and inquired about pretzels? David offered to put together a snack plate of munchies. Very accommodating, except that he came back a couple minutes later with two cheese plates and no snack plate. OK, perhaps he'll bring it on the next trip... or not. The cheese plate is a nice idea, I guess... three cheeses, a cold asparagus spear, an olive, artichoke heart and a small fruit salsa thimble, but no crackers. But really what is the point? It's a one hour flight. How about warm nuts in a ramekin (like AA), pretzels or even the DL-esque snack basket.