Well, VX is having a hard time as it is - if it had looked anything like a legacy US carrier we all know how long that would have lasted.
If it's not a provocation it's just sheer ignorance, so I'm going to take the former.
AA is putting in the Cathay style seats on its long haul fleet starting in November with the new 777s (and a bar of sorts, too), doing the whole mood lighting thing, and their first class internal seats on the new 738s and refurbed 757s are the best I've come across on internal US carriers. It will of course take aeons for the changes to ripple through the whole fleet and for the MD-80s to die the death they so richly deserve; judging by how well Virgin manages such things, then yeah, Branson's the guy to come in and help accelerate this
