I can’t think of many companies, in any line of business, which I like as much as I like Virgin America. I’ve often said that if I could only fly to destinations served by this airline–with its mellow and helpful people, universal in-flight Wi-Fi, and many 0ther attractions–I would.
But in the past two and a half weeks, I’ve taken four Virgin America flights, and found its Web site completely crippled. Everything I want to do on an airline site, I can’t do.
- Most of my flights haven’t shown up in my account;
- Even with a confirmation number, I sometimes haven’t been able to check in online (or using the machines at the airport);
- I tried to buy a ticket for another trip online, and got a message saying it didn’t go through–and then an e-mail confirmation saying I had bought a ticket;
- When I tried to cancel that ticket on the Virgin Web site, it told me I had to click a button on the bottom of the page–and there was no button;
- When I try–repeatedly–to make a change to yet another trip, all seems well until the very end–when I get bounced back to the home page without the change having been made;
- The points I’ve been theoretically accruing for recent trips aren’t appearing in my account.
At the moment, the Virgin America site is so broken that its press section has an error message where the press releases should be.
I love in-flight Wi-Fi so much that I’ve 
At this very moment, I”m using inflight Wi-Fi for the third time in my life–and for the first time, it’s putting me in a good mood. The first time I did so was on a demo flight for the now-defunct Boeing Connexion service, and it essentially failed to work; the second time was on one of the last