Review: Virgin America Main Cabin Select

I like the Baileys! Delicious and something you don't always find for free outside of business/first. I do feel bad for the FAs constantly delivering snacks and drinks though.

"Seat pitch is still better than on most other domestic airlines..."

Think you're being generous. At 32" (non-MCS) VX pitch seems middle of the pack. I find the seats cramped (I'm 6'). Jet Blue is much more comfy at 32-33". The problem with VX is there are so few MCS seats on the plane.

Most seasoned VX travelers know the 'order ALL the food you might want for the whole flight straight after takeoff' drill when seated in MCS.

The RED system knows inventory levels, and options will disappear off the screen once inventory is depleted. Not an issue on shorter flights, but on transcons you might get peckish 2.5 hrs in but the sandwich you fancied has since disappeared.

On one of my flights all the food ordering on the system was cut off after first service. I didn't try and order manually.
I have heard the tray on the bulkhead row is a little far away to work at comfortably with a laptop but haven't tried myself.
Many AS agents don't know what MCS is and play middle man with a VX liaison. Best to contact VX through Twitter to request getting on the MCS list which you have to do manually every time you book :(. Also, companion elites need to be on separate reservation. Can be a big problem if you also have an AS leg AS companion needs to be on same res to upgrade! What a mess.

WE flew from LAX to Honolulu and it's about 5 hours without snacks or sandwiches only drinks, they charge you for food. So I think I won't fly with them.

Andrew, no offense intended, but CLEARLY you are a VX virgin . . . I suppose it's better late than never, but it's also rather pointless unless the object of the exercise is to put another "notch on the bedpost," so to speak, as you can add VX to the list of airlines you've flown.

(In contrast, I suppose, I am all but an AS virgin having flown AS no more than a dozen times in my entire life, whereas I've been flying VX since they began flight ops in 2007 and have some 120 flights with them.)

The RED system of IFE *is* unique in that -- yes -- you order food through the IFE. On every VX flight, whether it's an hour flight (e.g.: SFO-LAX) or a transcon (e.g.: SFO-JFK), the in-flight crew comes through one time with the food/drink cart -- not only to fulfill orders already placed through RED, but also to serve people unfamiliar with the food ordering system and/or those who haven't gotten around to it yet. VERY FEW people I've ever flown with have "taken advantage" of the free food/alcohol when flying MCS. (As a VX Gold elite, I generally fly Main Cabin and get upgraded to MCS on just about every flight I take. ONE time, the upgrade didn't go through and when I asked at the gate, the agent asked what seat I was in and then said, "You might want to keep it. All I have is a middle seat." He was right; on a LAS-SFO hop, I'd rather have 9C¹ than 10E.)

Further, when sitting in MCS (or F), all of the movies, etc. available through RED are free. When flying up and down the West Coast, that hardly matters (to me) -- the flights are too short for a full-length movie anyway -- but I've always been able to find some film worth watching on transcon flights (flew SFO-JFK in F [for an actual net cost to me of 7,692 Elevate points, plus $11.60 for TWO tickets] as recently as 9/22/17).

In re: food, while I agree that, except in F, the offerings are not hot meals, I also find that food offered consistently better than comparable offerings on the US L3; certainly better than the peanuts/pretzels on WN; and better than AS, HA, or any other airline save B6. But surely this is an instance of "YMMV."
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¹ 9C is in an Exit Row, same as 10E, but on an aisle rather than the middle. It's not MCS, however, and the seats in row 9 don't recline -- not a problem for me, as I rarely recline my seat anyway on short flights. Did miss the free food, though.

@Dmodemd ---> a) I've never experienced a VX flight where the food ordering was "cut off after the first service," so that's a new one on me. I have experienced one flight where the RED system didn't work properly at all during the flight (audio/video was intermittent, and the food ordering system never worked at all despite several reboots), and VX sent everyone a $50 travel credit without asking.

b) I've never felt that the "tray on the bulkhead row is a little far away to work at comfortably with a laptop." It's certainly not too far away to eat off of, and that's generally closer than I want to be to my laptop. FWIW, I much prefer that bulkhead tray to one taking up additional seat width by coming out of the armrest.

c) Mergers NEVER run 100% smooth, and I too have hit an occasional "bump" in the road between AS and VX, but as I said above, I've never *not* received an upgrade to MCS, pre- or post-merger. Neither has my wife when on the same reservation, despite her being Elevate Silver and my being Elevate Gold.

I did try the bulkhead on my last flight and as I feared, the table is too far away to work comfortably on the laptop. I was hunched over the whole time which my back didn't appreciate. I agree it is much better than the solid seat dividers but for working I prefer the exit row.

I have not encountered the food ordering cut off since the first time it happened to me but I do find my orders are often not delivered correctly the first time but it gets sorted out. I do appreciate the rapid arrival of the drink cart.

You forgot 2 key MCS benefits (at least for some folks) (1) Free checked bag (2) Dedicated overhead space. And the early boarding is great for the vast majority of us who are not AS elites.
So in sum for a $10 fee (short flight) I am getting a host of benefits worth a lot more than $10, not even counting the free drinks and food...

Random thought re: a moribund thread . . .

@Boraxo, I've never personally seen "dedicated overhead [bin] space" on VX, that is I've never seen a sign that says something along the lines of "This bin is reserved for MCS passengers ONLY." On the other hand, since MCS boards *before* those in MC (Economy), bin space is *never* a problem.

@demodemd, you're quite right to point out the "goofs" in service. There have been a handful of times (on my 120+ flights) that my order has been "messed up" when flying VX MCS. Usually it has to do with getting ice, or (most often) only delivering one water rather than two -- but, yes, any "goof" is quickly straightened out.

THAT SAID, I'll repeat what I said back on Oct. 5th -- all of this is rather moot, as AS is working hard to make VX disappear completely as soon as possible . . .