Can Ya Get To Kenya? Part 1: Virgins

My journey to Kenya began, as so many do, with a panic attack.

Let us backtrack a few days to late Friday afternoon, when, having overcome a severe case of Packing Attention Deficit Disorder and essentially prepared myself to leave San Francisco the next day, I called Virgin America to see if I could add the flight miles to my frequent flyer account.

This would be impossible, the agent informed me, as I lacked not only a Virgin America frequent flyer account, but any sort of Virgin America plane ticket as well.

"Excuse me?"

"Ma'am, I don't see a Hannah Safford in our computer."

"Are you sure? Could you check again?"

"Oh wait, I'm sorry. You flew to Dallas in January!" the agent announced helpfully. "Have a wonderful evening!"

And so my mother and I immediately proceeded to frantically call and email every person we could think of who was somehow affiliated with the Princeton Environmental Institute. It being 8 PM on Friday on the East Coast, no one responded.

So, of course, we called and emailed them all a second time.

We were just about to go back for thirds when I got the bright idea to bother Public Safety at Princeton until they called the PEI intern coordinator at her home number on my behalf. 

As it turned out, I was booked on Virgin Atlantic, not Virgin America. This begs two questions:

1) Why on earth is the airline industry allowed to have two separate companies named after virgins, especially if one of them has a mascot that looks like this?

2) How much gleeful joy do Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic phone help operators get out of deliberately refusing to mention the existence of the other Virgin to their customers?