I don’t have much loyalty when it comes to airlines; the lowest fare usually gets my business. That’s because I’m not picky about the entertainment options, usually buy my own food for the plane plus I’m 5’8 so don’t need much leg room.

That’s not to say I don’t have my airline preferences. With all things equal, I would never go with Frontier Airlines and would rarely choose an airline like Spirit due to their hidden-in-plain-sight baggage fees.

On the other side, if ticket prices are within range of one another and Virgin America, JetBlue or Cathay Pacific are available, I’ll pay extra (a little extra) to fly with them. Specifically, Virgin America stands out as far as domestic options are concerned. With their modern terminals, neon interiors, intuitive technology, funky safety videos, free satellite TV, and reasonable prices, they stand out as my carrier of choice flying in the United States.

Not Just That, They’re Apparently Faster

And apparently, Virgin is the Michael Jordan of Airlines. Five Thirty-Eight released their fastest airlines interactive graphic and by their measure Virgin America was faster than its competition on 87 percent of the routes they had in common.

In head-to-head comparisons with common routes, Virgin came out on top with an 87 winning percentage. Sometimes it was comical how they beating down both larger carriers (Virgin defeated United 50-2) as well as fellow low-cost carriers (15-1 vs. Jetblue and 14-2 against Southwest) as if they were the Washington Generals.

Not sure if Southwest is still considered the darlings of the airline industry, but their pathetic winning percentage in this comparison (34%) shows that maybe their time has past? I haven’t flown Southwest in some time after flying them often many years ago; their prices seemed to have increased steadily over the years. In any case, Virgin America continues to set the bar high while keeping their prices competitive.