True, but...I bring an iPad or MBP on every flight so I don't need a screen. Fancy check-in stuff? I dunno, how fancy can it be (serious question asked out of ignorance)? What Alaska has seems to do the job, and I'd be at a loss to improve on what I view as a simple process. Virgin's nice, yes, but I really just want to be transported from point A to point B without the cattle car feel of less expensive airlines. For me, Virgin does seem to hit the happy medium of "costs a little more but worth it", but they don't fly Seattle to anywhere I care to go other than SF.

Service? I've had them screw up, but they have always eventually made it right. The worst was when it snowed in Seattle, meaning the plane never left to go get me in Orlando. Just a voice mail at 3:00 a. m. telling me I'm screwed. Called right back to their outsourced overnight call center who told me I could fly out in two days. Eventually my wife took over, got a FTE Alaska employee who got us out that day, and exit rows for the trouble. Now, that was with a five-hour layover in DC, and we shouldn't have to spend hours on the phone. I'd say they did their best, but "best" would have included taking me up on my offer to fly out of Tampa instead so they didn't have to funnel all the cancellations through Orlando. But it was good enough for me, and I've had far worse from other airlines. And Alaska has never once given so much as a sideways glance when I walk on with my mandolin case.

If they can extend the Virgin amenities to Alaska's SEA-MCO route (my most common trip), I look forward to it. Otherwise, meh, I'm happy with Alaska the way they are.

Alaska doesn't even let you pay for E+ seats. Or have IFE. Or... working WiFi half the time.

This is a deliberate design choice for the seats. They can be thinner, and have more space, if there are no screens. A lot of airlines are moving in that direction - people bringing their own tablets, or Delta now providing them for the flight. It's also apparently a pain to design an aircraft seat with a screen in it - the amount of engineering you have to do to make sure the screen won't kill someone in a crash bulks the seat up tremendously.

The last time I flew AS, they lost my bag. No big deal, it happens. I was staying with a friend in his apartment. Late that evening after I had gone to sleep, I received a series of voicemails from the AS employee trying to deliver my bag, but couldn't get into the building. The first few voicemails were rude, the last was vulgar. The employee ended up leaving my bag ON THEIR BACK PORCH and instructed me to go get it. To top the experience off, she left some sort of receipt on top of the bag, which I took and threw away. I later received another call from her berating me for taking the receipt, without which she apparently would not receive payment for delivering the bag.

For the return flight, I did arrive 5 minutes too late to check a bag by the rules. Instead of telling me this or giving me a chance to carry on my small bag (easily fits in the sizer), the check-in agent moved me to standby on the next & last SJC flight of the day, told me I wasn't likely to make that flight, and called for the next person in line. I went online with my laptop and found they were still selling one-way F tickets for that last flight for $250, so I bought one and ended up making it home that night, no thanks to the check-in agent.

Now, I will grant that at the time (~2005) I wasn't a super-experienced flyer, and there were tons of points I should have pushed back or complained, but their service was just plain awful. I've had a bunch of bad experiences with AS, but the above was the last straw. After that I booked Southwest/Virgin and just worked around their limited schedule for SJC/SFO-SEA.

Contrast this with VX, where I accidentally purchased a ticket for a flight the day before I intended to travel. I realized my mistake when I received a marketing "thanks for flying with us" e-mail. I called and explained that it was entirely my fault, and was allowed to rebook for the next day and they refunded the original ticket, minus the change fee. I had no status with VX, they had every right to take the entire ticket value and they still were incredibly generous.

I get the feeling their customer experience, like many other older american airlines are, is designed after listening more to the aging flight crews (and in no-doubt also after many negotiations with their union) than to the passengers.