On Wednesday, the first Virgin America Airbus A320s will take flight from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX) and San Francisco (SFO). The offshoot of European giant Virgin Atlantic, VA is owned primarily by Black Canyon Capital and Cyrus Capital Partners. It enters the market promising to deliver better prices and service than its rivals.

Its immediate rivals would appear to be JetBlue (NASDAQ:JBLU) and Southwest Airlines NYSE:LUV), both airlines operating on a model established by Virgin Atlantic focused on price, price, and price. How likely is Virgin America to make an impact on the increasingly crowded and fragile American air industry?

It has already driven down the price of the NYC-SF route to $250, according to the Wall Street Journal, significantly undercutting its rivals. How much of this price reflects lower costs, versus acceptable losses to establish business, is not clear. The airlines does start with new planes and hardware and new (cheap) hires, so it likely is starting with the lowest overhead it can anticipate.

JetBlue and Southwest, on the other hand, are already struggling with the increased expense of maintaining well-used equipment and the growing salary expectations of experienced crews, leaving them less room to trim costs.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article discussing the new launch of Virgin America, and its potential impact on other discount and legacy carriers. The company is said to be well funded and includes many of the same comforts as other carriers, at a time when customer satisfaction in the U.S. is at near-lows.

The thing is that a new start-up isn't likely to hit the legacy carriers as much. Larger discounters like Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) and Jetblue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ: JBLU) could feel the crunch down the road, but they won't even notice this launch for some time. Grabbing gates at major airports is no longer easy, and rolling out new routes takes time. At launch, the flights are only originating out of select spots: New York-JFK, Washington DC-IAD, San Francisco-SFO, Los Angeles-LAX, and Las Vegas. From Los Angeles, Virgin America only flies to New York, San Francisco, and DC; that San Francisco route is already extremely competitive. The New York departures are across country to L.A., Vegas, and San Francisco, so it seems the carrier will initially be competing in the longer-haul routes. The San Francisco to L.A. route is priced as low as $44 before taxes and fees.

This is added competition, but this has been in the works for years. Jetblue had some customer service issues that turned into a disaster. Southwest is starting to feel some of the heat because it isn't really THAT much of a discounter to legacy carriers if you don't book way in advance on the beloved "internet only" fares; and they are feeling some heat now that their fuel hedges are coming more in-line with other carriers. The real winner here is going to be you and me. Branson is already a bajillionaire, and this will be just one more tool keeping the air travel costs in line.

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.