Ever since my first trip on Virgin America last week, I’ve been trying to nail down what, exactly, makes the airline so special. I’ll begin with a few highlights:

– The security line at O’Hare was a winding nightmare, and after 20 minutes with almost no movement, I was genuinely worried that I’d miss the flight. But then a Virgin America staff member walked over to the line and called for all the Virgin America passengers who were traveling on my flight. She put us into a separate line, and I presume everyone made it on board. 

– When you order water on the plane, it comes in an actual bottle. Speaking of food and drinks, the coffee was great, and the snack boxes they sell onboard are reasonably-priced and quite tasty. I’ll never buy food in the terminal again when I’m flying Virgin America, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

– The in-flight entertainment system was a little sluggish, but being able to order food and drinks from your seat is amazingly convenient. Instead of having to wait for the drink cart to head your way or flagging down a flight attendant, you simply punch in the order and it appears at your seat a few minutes later.

What’s the common thread here? Virgin America makes nearly every part of the flying experience less stressful. Everything about the airline feels relaxed and predictable, which is a huge contrast to any other airline that I’ve flown with. As a passenger, this means you spend a lot less time worrying, and more time noticing the little things. Of course, Virgin America has all those bases covered, too — from comfortable seats to perfect lighting to a flight crew that actually seems to enjoy their job.

When you put it all together, I’m actually excited for the next time that I get to fly with Virgin America. And that’s something I never thought I’d say about an airline again.

Last week, I flew on Virgin America for the first time. It was a pretty amazing experience, which I’ll cover in more detail in an upcoming post. For now, I want to focus on a single detail that really surprised me.

I was seated in one of the bulkhead seats at the front of the plane. This type of seat tends to have a lot of legroom, but no under-seat storage. So, I had to place my carry on bag in the overhead bin, and I assumed that I would have to go fetch it once we reached cruising altitude.

However, my expectation was incorrect. In fact, before I even thought about getting my bag down, the flight attendant stopped by my row and asked:

“May I get your bag for you?”

I don’t recall if the other person in my row even answered. He was probably just as shocked as I was. Somehow, one of us nodded or mumbled something in the affirmative, and the flight attendant located our bags and handed them to us. On a long flight after a long day of travel, this small gesture made a huge difference.

All of this happened without any of the passengers requesting it. Granted, I don’t know if every Virgin America flight will feature this level of service, but I really hope it’s a fleet-wide thing. With the bar set so low for air travel these days, a simple courtesy like helping passengers with their bags makes people significantly happier with their flying experience, and encourages them to tell others about it, as well.

I’ve had the same type of coffeemaker for 5 years running. About 18 months ago, the carafe started leaking, so I checked if the manufacturer would replace it. Nope, they said, the carafe is an accessory, and accessories have no warranty coverage. A new carafe costs half as much as the entire machine, so I just bought another one.

Fast forward to this week, and the new unit has a different problem: it shuts off either right before or right after the end of the brew cycle, so the just-brewed coffee gets cold a few minutes later. The only way to make it work again is to unplug it from the wall. So I called the manufacturer and asked how to exchange it. They said I would have to pay them to mail me a new one, and then pay to send the old one back. A lot of companies make you send broken stuff back on your dime, but a charge for sending out a new one? That’s adding insult to injury.

I’m guessing the company in question spends almost nothing on warranty claims, since their warranties are all but useless. And as for my coffeemaker saga, I gave up on this brand, and bought a different make and model that cost only $20. For less money and time than I would have spent mailing back my old unit, I’ll be getting a brand new coffeemaker. I’m done with that other manufacturer for good. So when you look at it that way, I guess their decision to be cheap about warranties isn’t so smart, after all.

For some reason, the area around my apartment building has become a hot spot for movie filming. I think it started with The Dark Knight a few years back, and now it seems like there’s film crew vehicles on my block for several weeks each summer.

Normally, this isn’t a big deal. But this year, the latest film production — some sort of Superman sequel or prequel or whatever — ended up shutting down the entire block near me and making a huge amount of noise all day long. Our building management even emailed everyone to tell us that the front entrance area would be closed to vehicle traffic. I don’t have a car, but I’m sure that’s a big hassle for folks that do.

Despite limiting or totally blocking access to my building and others, and blaring directions into a megaphone at ridiculous volume levels, I’ve never heard a thing about what these film productions have done for the people who live or work nearby. Sure, it creates some short-term positions for the film crews and brings a little bit of revenue to the businesses nearby. But the impact on the people who live and work in the area is apparently being ignored.

I’m not proposing that the director send a personalized thank you note to the thousand-plus people in my building. But it would be nice if they provided some sort of token of their appreciation. For instance, maybe they could sponsor some coffee or snacks in our lobby before filming begins, or schedule a meet-and-greet with selected members of the crew. It doesn’t have to be much, but even a small gesture would help show that the film producers recognize their impact on the surrounding community, and aren’t above saying thank you to the folks who live there.

I’ve been scheduling a fair amount of travel lately, which has made me even more sensitive to the gap between what I expect from travel providers, and what they actually deliver.

For instance, consider the process of booking an airline ticket. Once I’ve made a purchase, I expect the following:

– An immediate, on-screen confirmation

– An email confirmation

– The ability to view my itinerary when logged in to the website

However, during my most recent ticket purchasing experience, the airline missed two out of three. Yes, I saw the on-screen confirmation, but I never got a confirmation email. Plus, it took about 30 minutes before the itinerary appeared in my account, with the website defaulting to a not-so-comforting error message in the interim.

While there might not be any quick fixes for these types of problems (after all, airlines probably have more legacy systems than any other consumer-facing business), there’s an easy way to help reduce the negative impact on customers. Just show a big, bold message right after booking that tells people when they should expect the email confirmation and when the itinerary will be available online. It’s not a perfect solution, but at least it sets reasonable expectations about what happens after purchasing a ticket.

As I was pricing out different flight options for an upcoming trip, I wanted to see how much extra it would be for a so-called premium economy seat on a particular airline. So I signed in to the airline website, chose the appropriate flight, and continued with the process until it finally let me select a seat and see the total cost. The price and scheduling options weren’t that great, so I decided not to purchase the ticket and began looking for the Cancel button. It was nowhere to be found, so I had no choice but to click some sort of Home link to abandon the purchasing process.

As far as I know, there’s no way I could have bought that ticket. I never clicked any button to confirm the purchase, and I never entered any credit card info or selected a card already on file. But it still felt awkward to just leave the purchasing process without clicking a Cancel button and seeing a confirmation that I had indeed abandoned the transaction.

From what I’ve seen, many transactional websites have removed the Cancel button from their checkout process. Presumably, this eliminates the chance that people will click it accidentally and reduces overall shopping cart abandonment rates. However, I believe the Cancel button still serves an important purpose on sites that specialize in high dollar value transactions, like airline booking sites and online retailers who sell expensive items.

By including a Cancel button in the checkout process, you give customers a way to freely browse your site and experiment with different purchasing options — without the fear that they’ll accidentally buy something that they didn’t intend to purchase. If you’re concerned that people will click it by mistake, just make it smaller and more subtle than the affirmative buttons like Continue or Place Order. Regardless of the specific form it takes, providing a Cancel button during the checkout process for high dollar value transactions will increase the shopper’s confidence and reduce anxiety. Ultimately, this should lead to higher conversion rates and fewer frantic calls from customers asking whether or not they actually placed an order.

During a trip last month, I had the opportunity to ride four different train systems, ranging from fairly ancient to brand new. The newer trains (and even some of the old ones) included some nice approaches to customer messaging. For example:

– When you’re waiting on the station platform, electronic signs tell you when the next train is arriving.

– When you’re riding on the train itself, electronic signs show the name of the next stop.

However, after I waited nearly half an hour for two separate trains to actually leave the first station, I realized that something is missing. In particular, the digital signs on each train should tell you when the train will actually start moving away from the first station. With this information in hand, customers will be far less impatient and anxious at the start of their trip, which should make the entire process seem smoother, faster and more efficient.

Over the weekend, I took a walk past a new shopping center in my neighborhood. It’s slated to open in about a month, and will include the first real grocery store that people in this area can get to without crossing the river.

The scene looked just like what you’d expect from an almost-finished commercial building: the exterior was basically done, the sidewalks were passable, and the interior was in the early stages of tenant buildout. But one thing was definitely out of place: the dead bird on the sidewalk. How did a dead bird end up there? Most likely, it flew from the park across the street into the reflective glass on the front of the new building, and was killed on impact.

Birds running into buildings is hardly news. From what I recall, it’s been a problem ever since the first glass-front skyscrapers were constructed. But it poses a special challenge for new buildings that are located close to animal habitats and migration paths, such as parks, lakes, beaches and nature preserves. Arguably, the simple proximity to nature means that customers will expect those buildings to be greener and more sensitive to the surrounding nature areas.

Ironically, the shopping center in question has actually been touted as the first LEED-certified structure of its kind in my area, and boasts a series of other environmentally-conscious features. Hopefully the owners will do something to reduce the danger to the birds living in the park across the street, since it would be a real shame for such a well-conceived project to damage the neighboring habitat.

I’ve noticed something strange on my last few airline trips: it’s becoming very difficult to find simple things like milk on the beverage menu. While I haven’t studied the matter in detail, there seems to be no shortage of sodas and other sugary drinks. Perhaps that’s what most customers want, but it’s still a discouraging trend.

With all the media attention that has been directed towards obesity and the importance of healthy eating and exercise, you would think that airlines could keep at least a nominal amount of healthy beverages on hand. Heck, even a bare-bones convenience store carries milk in the refrigerated cases. I don’t know whose decision it was to phase out such basic items on various airlines, but it certainly seems like a shortsighted one.

During a recent trip to the airport, I came across a rather infuriating escalator situation. There was a single escalator located next to a steep staircase, but it was programmed to move downward. In other words, everyone had to carry their bags by hand up the stairs, which can be a real pain even for people who are in pretty good shape.

From what I can tell, the designers got it backwards. It’s obviously a lot harder to walk up a staircase than to walk down the same staircase — especially when you’re carrying luggage. So if there’s only one escalator in place, it should be programmed to travel upwards. While having escalators moving in both directions is always preferable, this approach should provide the greatest benefit in situations where there’s only one escalator available.