If you’re from out of town, you’ll in all likelihood get to Gibraltar by plane, landing at Gibraltar Airport. From the air, it looks quite standard:

A view of the other half of the runway shows something else:

At first glance, it doesn’t look like there is anything particularly remarkable. Let’s take another look at the airport at another time of day though:

“Is…. is that traffic?” you might ask yourself. And you’d be right! Gibraltar Airport is a drive-through airport, literally. The airport is actually right in the city center of Gibraltar and the street which runs across the runway, Winston Churchill Avenue, is closed every time a plane lands or takes off. Check it out:

As can be seen, there isn't a whole lot going on here.

While drilling, the team discovered a large cavern full of natural gas. Drilling into the area led the ground on which the drilling equipment sat to collapse, leaving a crater between 50 and 100 meters in size.

Let’s say you were responsible for this accident. Would you:

a) Engineer a secure covering of the hole, similar to Chernobyl’s sarcophagus.
b) Just leave, there’s nobody in that area anyway.
c) Eliminate the threat of disaster by lighting the gas on fire.

Any guesses? Turns out the correct response is “C.” Not knowing how much gas was in the cavern, it was nonetheless decided to simply ignite it all and in turn, prevent any hazard from spreading.

Usually when chemicals explode, you might see something like this happen:

That didn’t really happen in Derweze, or Darvaza as it is somtimes referred. Instead, the gasses just … kept burning. In fact, nearly 40 years later, the hole is still burning and has received the moniker of “The Gates of Hell.” It’s somewhat of an apt title, since the scene now looks like this:

In still frames, it’s actually quite beautiful:

(Photo Credit: John H. Bradley)

Part One: Check-In

I flew from Boston Logan to LAX and am writing this post on my return trip to the east coast. Walking into the terminal, one is greeted with a classy almost club-like atmosphere that continues throughout the journey for the most part

The Self Check-In system is very clean and elegant:

You slide your credit card along the right side of the display and your boarding pass pops out (like toast!) of the small slot to the left.

After check-in varies a bit by airport. At Logan, VA has its own very quick security line leading to two gates. There isn’t much in there and you can’t really leave once you’re through the metal detectors. At LAX, there’s a lot more available to do once you’re inside the gating area. I jumped to the conclusion that VA must treat its employees quite well, as I noticed they all have matching luggage while I was waiting to board:

Part 2: Getting Comfy & Red

OK, so let’s say we’re on the plane. What’s so awesome? Pretty much everything. Let’s start with a tour of  Red. The in-flight “interactive environment” is central to pretty much everything on-board.

There are a few ways to use it, either via the touch-screen at every seat, or by the remote control in each armrest:

View of the remote through the armrest (you flip it open to pull it out) while an announcement was made over the PA system. The display at the top will otherwise display the TV channel that's playing on your screen.

The remote control out of its armrest.

I tend to grasp at gadgets quickly. Too quickly, sometimes. After a minute or so of playing around, it was time for the ultimate airline safety video:

Part 3: In the Air

And we’re off! Let’s finish the tour of Red since it’s not activated until after the safety video. There are a number of modules built into the system. I’ll describe them each in no particular order.

One of the convenient things about VA is that instead of flight attendants running through the cabin every few hours asking if you’d like to buy food or drinks, it’s all done through Red. (They do a single run-through for drinks early on, then it’s up to you). So if you want to get some nosh, bang on “Eat” or hit the corresponding button on the remote with a cake icon on it and look around.  As you can see above, if you’re watching TV, it appears as PIP as you browse the selections.

One of the other neat and unrelated things about the TV part is that if you bring up the program guide, you can tap a show that will air at a later time and it will pop up later with a reminder.

First page of drink selections available through Red. Standard airplane soft drinks are available for free.

Ordering food and drinks is just like shopping online, you pick out what you want, add it to a cart, and then pay by credit card. You can swipe your card on the underside of the display.

It goes without saying that Red’s primary service is for in-flight video:

Things you can watch

TV and Music Videos are free, the rest are a nominal fee. Premium TV includes content like HBO specials.

Besides watching things, there’s also a pretty extensive audio library in addition to satellite radio. You can use the system to create your own playlist too.

There are also games!

Now imagine my surprise when I saw this. Doom? Awesome! Here’s what it looks like:

You can play via the touch screen, which doesn’t really work for Doom, but that’s OK, because if you flip the remote control over, you’ve got a D-pad, action buttons, and full QWERTY keyboard:

Oh,  you can also use it to purchase items through Red with your credit card!  Check it out– I used my MetroCard for show:

There are a plethora of other neat options to play around with, including built in Google maps services with the plane’s current altitude and position, and remaining distance:

So let’s see, what else is there… each group of three seats has two standard 110v power plugs so you don’t need to drop extra cash on a special converter or anything. For those of you equipped with a laptop, that means that you can stay powered for your whole trip. Not only that, you can fly wireless! VA offers wifi access through GoGo for $12.95 per trip. I personally think it would be better to pay for wireless while in the terminal and get it free on the plane too, not so bad though. The speeds are also really great:

There is also really bright LED lighting above each seat instead of the standard incandescent bulbs.

At the end of each flight, I thought it was pretty clever how to wake everyone up, the crew just turns them all on at once. I guess at this point I should also mention that instead of typical white lighting inside the cabin, there’s really cool dark blue and purple mood lighting along the ceiling and walls. It’s like a club in the air.

So that’s it! I’ve loved the experience immensely and highly suggest flying them. It was just $119 from BOS to LAX one-way, grab a flight today at VirginAmerica.com. It’s really great to see that Richard Branson & company has dumped what I can only guess is a ton of money into the Virgin America brand, delivering a first-class experience with an economy price. The stuff they’re doing has to be keeping the folks at Southwest and JetBlue up at night.