I fly quite a bit on United, American, and Southwest. Lately I’ve had occasion to fly VirginAmerica three times this last year. They are by far my favorite airline in every category I can think of but particularly service. I’m surprised by this article but due to personal experience will write it off as an outlier. On an aside how anybody can suggest air travel was ever better is running uphill against so very many improvements. First and foremost for me is access.
Never flew Virgin...as I said, for years just about the only airline here was UsAirways (a/k/a Useless Air). We now have more competition, particularly from Southwest. I’ve flown Southwest several times and I have to say that in difficult situations (bad weather, problems with the plane, etc.), the employees have remained courteous, cooperative and helpful. Once I arrived at a gate to find a batch of passengers who were supposed to depart from that gate before my flight, but their plane was delayed. One of the Southwest employees came out and serenaded everyone with a ukelele. The guy sang like a rusty gate, but it was fun and certainly put the passengers from the delayed flight in a much better mood.
Now, Southwest doesn’t fly everywhere from here, but where it does, I will take SW over Useless Air.