Award-winning airline brings new jobs, lower fares and much-needed flight competition to the Garden State.
Virgin America, the award-winning domestic airline, is celebrating the launch of its new low-fare, upscale nonstop service to New Jersey’s Newark International Airport (EWR) from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) on April 9, 2013, with a red carpet send-off for some of its first commercial flight guests at EWR – along with local leaders, Port Authority officials, Virgin Group Founder Sir Richard Branson and Virgin America’s CEO David Cush.
At a time when most U.S. carriers have been consolidating, Virgin America is bringing new jobs and nonstop flight competition from California’s largest airports to New Jersey. Prior to entering the EWR market, the San Francisco-EWR route was only served by one carrier and had some of the highest average fares in the nation. Virgin America will bring some healthy competition to the market, with low fares and service that has taken top honors as “Best U.S. Airline” in both Conde Nast Traveler’s Readers’ Choice Awards and Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards every year since the airline’s 2007 launch. With fleetwide WiFi, custom-designed leather seating, power outlets, personal touch-screen entertainment platforms and new aircraft with three classes of service, Virgin America’s business-friendly flights will offer a fresh new option for travelers to the region. Headquartered in California, Virgin America has already built a strong following of bi-coastal flyers with its popular nonstop flights from both LAX and SFO to New York’s JFK. The addition of Newark to its network means Virgin America will now serve nine of the top 10 business markets from SFO and 8 of the top 10 business markets from LAX.
To celebrate the launch of a fresh travel option for the Garden State’s entrepreneurs, the airline is launching a social media campaign that invites travelers to share how they would use the airline’s business-friendly features to “fly like a boss” for a chance to join a live Google+ hangout onboard an aircraft with Mashable CEO & founder Pete Cashmore and Virgin Group Founder/’Entrepreneur-in-Chief’ Sir Richard Branson during the launch reception on April 9th. In addition, those who use the hashtag #flylikeaboss will see their Tweets appear on a live digital billboard in the New York area.
In addition, Virgin America is partnering with the Knowledge is Power Program’s (KIPP) TEAM Academy in Newark to help fund college trips for up and coming junior-high school entrepreneurs heading to the West Coast this summer.
Students participating in the summer trips will be on-hand at the airline’s gate celebration to meet Virgin’s Entrepreneur-in-Chief – Sir Richard Branson.
