Shopping around for a relatively inexpensive flight for my Christmas travels yielded a few options this year, and I decided to give a new carrier a try because they advertised extremely discounted fares.  That would be Direct Air, which offers flights for as low as $99 one way. Rather than tell you what I didn’t like about them, I’d prefer to focus on what they got right; namely, the flight itself. From start to finish, I was impressed with the plane and the amenities that it offered. Direct Air is a reseller of Virgin America flights and the plane they had us on was top notch. The seats were comfortable leather, beverages were complimentary (something that’s getting rare), there were interactive touch displays in all the seatbacks, and the atmosphere on the plane was very “hip”. An example of this is the obligatory pre-flight announcements by the hostesses. Most people usually ignore this while the attendants rattle through their spiel in a monotone, but Virgin put together a highly amusing little animated movie to explain the rules and everything (“Now, for the .0001 percent of you that need an explanation of how to work a seatbelt…”).

Very pleasing to the eye

Instead of the standard flourescent lighting that other airlines use in their planes, Virgin has placed a row of soothing blacklights along the walls and soft blue lighting above the aisles. The blacklight effect is much more subtle than what you’d see at a club, but it still makes brightly colored objects like the yellow pens the flight attendants take your orders with glow.

I could write a whole article just on the interactive multimedia system in the seatbacks, but I’ll try to summarize my thoughts. The system, called “Red”, is based on a custom Linux platform and it gives travellers the ability to watch TV / movies and create playlists from a surprisingly well stocked library of music (Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Norah Jones, N.E.R.D., Justice, Leftfield, REM, and tons more). You can also play games like Doom and Asteroids (there’s a game console-like controller stored in the seat armrests), and finally what I felt was one of the coolest features — seat-to-seat instant messaging and a chatroom for the entire plane. See a cute chick sitting in 7C? Shoot her an IM!

Despite reaching my destination a little later than planned (eight hours later), I walked away from the airport impressed with my Direct Air / Virgin America experience. The neat features of the plane and the hip attitude of Virgin will definitely make me consider Direct Air again in the future.

I’m really happy to see that YouTube has decided to turn up HD quality streaming. That makes them more competitive with Vimeo, which I’ve preferred until now. Here’s a quick 720p video I shot to test out the new feature:

I dig it!