Virgin America Airlines certainly knows how to treat its first-time customers.

Before a Las Vegas-to-San Francisco departure recently, flight attendants asked if there were any of us on board who had never flown Virgin before.

It was kind of a strange question, since Virgin only began flying to Las Vegas a couple of weeks earlier, so I figured most of the 50 or so of us on board were flying the airline for the first time.

But I went ahead and raised my hand.

The first eight with hands up that the flight attendant pointed to were then invited to sit in the first-class cabin of the Airbus A320 jet.

“We don’t have anybody in first class today, so you’re welcome to sit up here,” she said.

Not bad, I thought. I wonder how often this happens?

It didn’t happen on the return trip, but for me, it didn’t matter. I already had a first-class ticket for the return.

My assignment was to fly Virgin to San Francisco and back and write about the experience. Yes, I know, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

As a frequent user of Las Vegas’ busiest air carrier, Southwest Airlines, I was anxious to compare it to Virgin.

The Virgin experience actually began when I bought the tickets. Many of us purchase airline tickets online and the Virgin Web site is easy to navigate. Because there aren’t too many destinations on Virgin’s route map yet, the drop-down menus are uncluttered and finding flights was simple.

One of the steps you get on Virgin that you don’t get on Southwest, of course, is your ability to choose a seat. Like most airlines that offer seat selections on their Web sites, a model of the jet is provided with symbols showing which seats are open and which ones have been taken.

Because local consumers haven’t quite caught on to Virgin yet, there were plenty of seats to choose from, including the coveted exit-row seats. When I clicked on one of those seats, I got a pop-up window on the computer informing me that I had selected one of the coach cabin’s premium seats and if I wanted to take it, it would cost me an additional $15 for my ticket.

Since it was only a 90-minute flight to San Francisco, I felt that I could live without the extra leg room.

The transaction took just a few minutes to complete. Virgin is offering introductory fares of $44 one way to San Francisco International Airport, so with all the taxes included, you could fly there for just over $100. Even flights next year are only marginally more expensive at $49 one way.

I opted for the first-class return flight to explore the complete Virgin America experience.

Flying Southwest, I am used to setting an alarm on my watch so that I can get online 24 hours before my flight time and assure myself of getting an A boarding pass. Because Southwest has an open seating policy, it pays to get the A pass allowing you on the plane with the first wave of passengers to get the best seats and an assurance of overhead bin space.

No need to worry about that on Virgin. I had my assigned seat. But I knew I had to check in and get a boarding pass at some point. But I didn’t have to access the Web site. Instead, Virgin e-mailed me with a link to get to my boarding pass, another nice little convenience.

At McCarran, Virgin flies out of the D gates. For those who have visited both the C and D gates, the latter are clearly the nicer, built more recently than Southwest’s home on the C side.

Virgin normally boards by zone, putting the first-class passengers on the plane first, followed by those sitting at window seats in the back of the aircraft, then aisle seats in the back, then the windows and aisles toward the front. On this particular day, there really weren’t enough people flying to worry about boarding by zone so all of us just got on.

Passengers are invited to grab headphones or ear buds from a bin before getting on the plane.

The first thing you notice when you get on the plane is the “mood lighting.” The leather seats (black in the main cabin, white in first class) have that new-car-upholstery feel and smell and they’re all bathed in purple, courtesy of the unusual lighting.

Like all commercial airliners, there are warning lights advising passengers to buckle their seat belts. But unlike most planes, there also are warning lights advising passengers when they can use their electronic devices.

Electronic devices are a major part of the Virgin story. The jet’s seatback entertainment system — called “Red” — is one of the best in the airline industry. Touch-screen technology enables passengers to navigate Red easily and from it, passengers can watch television or movies, listen to music, play video games, view the progression of the flight on a map, order food and e-mail other passengers on the flight.

Most passengers on my flight were like people who just bought a new gizmo at Best Buy and had to test out all the features of Red.

I put together a play list of songs by more than 50 artists that was far longer than the 90-minute duration of the flight. I scanned the food menu and was disappointed to discover that it’s a feature still under construction, or maybe it’s only available on transcontinental flights. When it’s ready, you’ll be able to buy food with a credit card and have the flight attendant deliver it to your seat. The first-class food offerings were some small containers of fruit and yogurt — nothing to write home about, but upscale next to Southwest’s peanuts.

Next, I e-mailed a couple of sentences to my wife, who was sitting right next to me, just to see the technology work. Each Red unit has a control panel inside the armrest with video game controls on one side of it and a keyboard for sending text messages on the other.

Another feature on the system that hasn’t been enabled will give you the ability to send e-mail from the plane. Press releases say that feature is expected to be available next year.

The satellite television reception worked on most stations, with choices like ESPN, CNN and the Cartoon Network, but you can’t get network TV, so it was impossible to watch the World Series on the return flight.

It was kind of fun using the Google Maps feature that enables passengers to zoom in on flight progress and realize that the highway I’m seeing on the ground below is U.S. 395, which connects Reno and the Yosemite National Park area.

As I got off the plane in San Francisco, a fellow passenger stated the obvious: “This was a lot nicer than Southwest,” he said.

It was interesting that he made that comparison, since Southwest has gone out of its way to remind Virgin America that it intends to maintain its grip on its title of premier low-cost carrier in the country. The fact that Southwest chose to begin service to San Francisco International a few weeks before Virgin America launched when it already had flights to Oakland and San Jose was Southwest’s warning shot across the bow.

Analysts have pondered whether Southwest would upgrade its product in the face of Virgin’s entry, but it will be hard to beat Red for entertainment.

As we pulled into San Francisco International, I discovered that Virgin America is based in the airport’s international terminal and our flight pulled in next to a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 bound for London. That tells me that while independent of each other, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America likely will coordinate schedules.

That’s really not much of a stretch for Virgin in Las Vegas as well, considering that when the new Terminal 3 is complete in a few years, international flights will be coming in near the D gates and there will be a transit system linking Terminal 3 and those gates. Richard Branson, Virgin Atlantic’s top executive, told me at Virgin America’s inaugural flight last month that more overseas flights to Las Vegas on Virgin Atlantic are on the way.

So where will Virgin America go next from Las Vegas? As I got off the return flight to McCarran, I overheard a flight attendant tell a passenger to keep his eyes open for an announcement on flights to and from Los Angeles soon. Virgin already has flights between LA and San Francisco.

It wouldn’t shock me if the next move is to connect more of the existing dots to Las Vegas with routes to New York and Washington, D.C., as soon as Virgin takes delivery of more planes.

When that happens, the competition will really heat up.

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