

'Uber for private jets' is grounded, but CEO says he hopes to raise more money - morisy
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2013/12/uber_for_private_jets_is_groun.html

======
spitfire
So they sold seats on smaller jets ("private jets") between 10 cities. They
may not have realized it, but they were just an airline with really bad
economics.

Hint: You don't want to own the heavy inventory, just have control of it when
needed. Uber doesn't own the cars.

~~~
jmacd
Blackjet didn't own the jets.

~~~
spitfire
They were buying some sort of inventory (seats or flights outright), correct?
-> You are now an airline.

airbnb, über, ebay and craigslist don't have any expensive inventory. They
just provide the eyeballs and matching venue to make business happen. That's
what those guys should have done.

------
mathattack
I can't fathom this working. Why not just fly first class? The purpose of
private jets is flexibility and privacy. If you want to pay up, NetJets is an
option. But perhaps I'm not their target customer.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
No security line. More flexibility about when you go. There's nothing like
flying in a private plane.

~~~
apaprocki
I signed up for TSA Pre and haven't seen a security line since.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
No, I mean _NO_ security line. You can drive your car out onto the tarmac, hop
in the plane, and have your rental car/limo waiting for you on the tarmac on
the other side. You don't even have to _look_ at a TSA agent.

This is the reason why all of the BS exists around flying commercially. If
truly wealthy individuals had to suffer through that, airport security would
have been dismantled years ago.

~~~
apaprocki
Yes, I understand -- just saying that you can mitigate it enough that you
don't need a private plane. If you fly Virgin upper class, for instance, you
get pretty much what you describe. A car will pick you up and deliver you
behind all the typical airport security with your boarding documents.

~~~
mattzito
Right, _but_ \- Virgin upper class if you're flying out of NYC, for example,
can get you to....the UK. And a limited number of times a day.

Private planes are absolutely awesome for getting between inconvenient points
domestically. Have to get from San Jose to Austin on short notice? A quick
skim of ITA shows coach fares of $1k and they all require a stop somewhere,
with an average duration of 7-ish hours.

Or, hop on a private jet, skip security, take off pretty much whenever you're
ready to take off, nad then come back when you want it.

------
arbuge
Hindsight is always golden but ths particular idea always seemed to me to be
the handiwork of investors & execs in the Silicon Valley bubble extrapolating
their needs and wants to the rest of the general population.

~~~
VladRussian2
well, there seems to be uncanny valley between flying an airline, even in
business/first class and private jet using something like prepaid fractional
card (like NetJet Marquis - last time i heard it was 100K for 25 hours, today
probably somewhat higher).

Of course the valley is for the reason, yet for some above mentioned people it
may look like a business opportunity. Anyway, they raised 2M - peanuts for VC
to explore on practice whether it is opportunity or not.

~~~
neurotech1
One of the problems is that a mid-size business jet (say Citation X or
Gulfstream V/G550)costs as much to fly as a regional airliner like a Embraer
E170/190($10k+/Hour) due to engine design optimization and is only marginally
faster than the E170 in flight time assuming both fly non-stop.

Smaller business jets don't have the fuel range to do a coast-to-coast flight
non-stop with passengers. E170/190s can be fitted with auxiliary tanks for
coast-to-coast corporate shuttle flights.

------
vampirechicken
I love how the company didn't get mentioned in the headline, but Uber did.

------
sirkneeland
Business opportunity: an Uber for "An Uber for" companies!

------
rblatz
At one point I found a site claiming to be an Uber for private jets, and they
booked seats on private jets that were already flying between your
destinations, either empty or not full.

The idea was to defray some the cost of flights that were already happening,
and to provide in some cases cheaper than first class flight prices.

I wish I could find that again, I never really looked into if it was actually
a decent deal or not.

~~~
AJ007
Over the past 7 or 8 years I've seen multiple companies tried to do this. On
paper, the concept makes sense.

~~~
rblatz
But I suspect that if you have the money to pay for a pilot and a private jet
you don't really care about making back ~3-5k in flight costs. Especially if
it means you have to share your plane with people you don't know and that may
not treat your plane with respect.

