Written for the Airline Passenger Experience Association – APEX.aero
Passengers might look out the window of their 737 or A320 with envy, as they watch a Gulfstream, Learjet or Falcon taxi by. But add in the frustrations of airport crowds, flight delays and long drives to and from an airport, then the idea of point-to-point travel in a corporate aircraft begins to look even more attractive.
A new startup company, JetSmarter, hopes to bring a disruptive process to the method of organizing a corporate aircraft charter that has traditionally used paper booking, middlemen and agents. Sergey Petrossov, JetSmarter’s 26-year-old founder and CEO, has created a mobile app that provides the availability and details of more than 3,000 corporate aircraft, tied to a client’s specific needs through the company’s unique software.
Owners register their aircraft on JetSmarter, and provide regular charter rates, location, aircraft details and availability in real-time, using the app. According to their website, almost 30 percent of all corporate aircraft flights are flown without any passengers, so-called “empty legs,” and JetSmarter gives aircraft owners the opportunity to monetize those flights. Anyone can register and book flights using the app, but members (who pay an annual fee of $7,000) can get empty leg flights at an extremely low cost, or even free.
The economics of booking a corporate aircraft can be compelling when there are enough people to fill the seats, especially when passengers would normally book business or first class airline seats. And an airport close to the final destination that can handle a corporate aircraft can make a booking decision easy.
JetSmarter is taking a hybrid approach that falls somewhere between full or fractional ownership of an aircraft, and air-taxi operations that sell individual seats to passengers for on-demand or scheduled flights.
Another operating model is Santa Barbara-based Surf Air’s, membership-based air-taxi service. Surf Air flies scheduled flights to destinations in California using seven-passenger Pilatus PC-12 turboprops, has 1,000 members since beginning operation in June 2013, and has ordered 65 new PC-12s. Another model includes Linear Air, self-described as the leading air taxi company in the United States, which has been steadily expanding their service from the Northeast US to other parts of the country.