Brad Ideas - Virgin America Airways and on-demand ordering - Comments

co-pilot handing out drinks

lisathepilot — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:06:24 -0800

Hello, I would prefer the co-pilot not take on waiter duties on my flights. He's there to take over in case the pilot drops dead, remember?

For safety?

brad — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:12:34 -0700

Flights have been cutting FAs quite a bit of late, so no, it’s not about safety. Yes, in the tiny, tiny fraction of flights where there is a safety issue, the FAs are there to help, but this is not what pays their salaries.

If you just wanted safety FAs, you could offer to train passengers on safety, and give them a $30 discount on their flights (if they are one of the first 5 trained passengers to book.) Way cheaper than an FA. If not enough trained passengers book on board, then send an FA to do that flight if you truly need a minimum number of safety officials.

FAs would still put the food in the dumbwaiter robot, though I could imagine fully automated vending. Of course, outside of the main eating hours, there could just be vending machines at various places in the aircraft to serve the food, but this would still mean all that aisle traffic.

The robots would indeed weigh less than the FAs. There is not much too them — a track in the ceiling, a few motors.

Role of Flight Attendants

Julian — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:12:31 -0700

I don't work in the industry, but my understanding is that the primary role of flight attendants is safety - particularly rapidly emptying a plane in an emergency. The fact that they can serve drinks is an incidental bonus.

Therefore, the drink-serving robot may not result in less staff, and may not result in cost-savings.

Furthermore, it is hard to imagine a robot system that would weigh much less than a 50kg flight-attendant, and hence use more fuel.

I would agree fully

brad — Sat, 30 May 2009 13:00:45 -0700

Especially if not in an aisle seat, but I found the constant traffic meant it was hard to sleep at any time. Of course, I don’t fall asleep easily on a plane (even in the window) so there may be no hope for me.

on-demand service

Nikita — Sat, 30 May 2009 11:31:14 -0700

One other reason to like the on-demand service is that I often nap on a plane, and it's nice not to worry about waking up for when the cart comes by.

Window seat

brad — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:38:12 -0700

That is a problem. Of course if it could also swing horizontally it could deliver to you. There would be rails in the ceiling, and on them would be a unit which is say 4’ long, 3’ from the center in one direction, and 1’ with counterweight in the other direction. It would lower on cables when nobody was present in the aisle and use a simple infrared lidar to avoid hitting people. It would then rotate to reach window seats if desired. These newer planes have good headroom, I don’t see anybody’s head being close to the overhead bins/light panel.

To avoid spillage you either need a dynamic stability robot or just serve only bottled and canned drinks, or have sealing lids to snap on for mixed or poured drinks.

Note as well that such a robot system would probably reduce the number of flight attendants needed, which readily pays for it. Not that the flight attendants would like that. And while the union would never stand for it, there’s no reason you could not even have the copilot pitching in serving food!

In the current system, all the FAs do this concentrated feeding of the pax, and then they stand around in the back waiting for sporadic requests. In Virgin’s system people just order when they want and that spreads around the ordering, allowing it to be handled with fewer people, I suspect, though there would still be rushes. If you liked the screen could show you where you were in the queue. In fact you could even order on the web in advance in either system and get an early position if you are really hungry.

If you were in a window

aram — Tue, 12 May 2009 08:46:49 -0700

If you were in a window seat, then a robot would need secondary tracks in each row to reach you. (Otherwise you rely on your seatmates being awake.) Then the robot could move to directly above your seat and then wait for you to pull it down, so there's no making people get out of the way. On the other hand, my head nearly touches the ceiling even w/o any robots in the way.

Virgin America Airways and on-demand ordering

brad — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:42:06 -0700

Yesterday I took my first flight on Virgin America airways, on the IAD-SFO run. Virgin offered a tremendous price (about $130 one way) but it’s worth examining how they have made use of technology on their planes. Mostly I usually end up on United, which is by far the largest carrier at SFO. Because of this, I fly enough on it to earn status, and that it turn provides a seat in their Economy Plus section which has more legroom, priority boarding and in theory, an empty middle if there are empty middles. This is 90% of the value of the status — the other main value, ability to upgrade, is hard to actually make use of because business class is usually full. The extra legroom is surprisingly pleasant, even for a widebody individual like myself who would much prefer extra width if I had a choice.

Other than Economy Plus (and some very nice business class on some of the long-haul planes,) United is falling behind other airlines. It would be hard to recommend an ordinary coach seat. The one big amenity that more and more other airlines are providing is power in coach, in particular 115v AC power which is more flexible than the older 15vdc “Empower” system United uses in business class. The main downside of the 115v connections is they tend to be mounted under the seats, making them hard to get to. Air Canada has put them in the personal video panels. Virgin placed them under the seats but high and forward enough to be reached (if you knew what you were looking for) but also so close as to make wall-warts bump against your legs. Virgin also offered USB jacks down under the seats, also hard to get to. Even if you don’t want to put 115v up higher, USB charging jacks are better placed in the video console/seatback I think.

American Airlines has a mix of DC and AC power, but still makes it available in coach. Continental has put EmPower on some planes in the front half of coach, but some newer planes have AC power all the way through coach.