This is a place you'd expect to see men and women buying a drink for someone sitting a few seats away. Now, that time-honored ritual is moving to airline flights.
"I think it's a little weird, given you're in a confined space, but it's pretty interesting," one man mused.
Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin America Airlines, is promoting his mile-high love connection idea in a not-so-subtle sales pitch.
"Here's my guide to getting lucky at 35,000 feet," Branson said in a YouTube video. "Pinpoint the object of your affection."
Pictures provided by Virgin America show how it's supposed to work. Passengers can use the screen in front of them to find the seat number of a love interest and send him or her a drink. Passengers can even text each other seat-to-seat.
"It's clever," Virgin America passenger Elliot Klein said. "No one's bought me a drink so I don't know how I really feel about, it but I wouldn't object."
"Probably not something that I would want, have someone just send a drink over to me," San Francisco resident Maria Sheldon said. "Like, you said, then you're obligated to talk to that person and you're stuck on a bus in the sky."
The Virgin America counter looks and sounds like a singles club before you even get on the plane. This new gimmick is seen as a reflection of technology running our lives.
"I think the reality is things have changed where people are more comfortable talking and flirting through an electronic device than they are in person because they don't have to deal with that rejection," CNET Senior Editor Brian Tong said. "So you have a system like this on a plane, that makes it easier and less intimidating."
And possibly a little too interesting.
"Whenever the first fight on a plane is over sending a drink to a girl, that'll tell us," Tong said.
The service works aboard Virgin's domestic flights.
This story was reported by KTRK-TV's sister station, KGO-TV in San Francisco.
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