
Show HN: SimpleCharters – Compare and book private jets online - charlesdenault
https://www.simplecharters.com
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dbenj
Solid concept, but the pricing is way off base. I priced out a trip, and then
compared it to other available options, and SimpleCharter was 55% (no typo)
more expensive than what I found elsewhere, similar or better aircraft.

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charlesdenault
Thanks for the feedback! Feel free to shoot me an email at charles at
simplecharters.com, I'd love to take a look at the searches and see why there
was such a discrepancy.

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dbenj
Seeing well into 6 figures for a 600nm flight on a mid. Doesn't seem close to
reality.

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charlesdenault
There is always the case for non-optimal pricing caused by a significant
layover potentially combined with large repositioning costs. Again, I'd love
the chance to take a look at your specific searches to see what's happening.

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charlesdenault
I submit this a couple years ago before the product was even built. Unlike
other players in the space, we're not dealing with empty legs or per-seat
pricing. Everything shown is guaranteed and processed in real-time. Feedback
is always welcomed!

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sokoloff
Couple pieces of feedback. I tried it out for some trips I commonly take in
our aircraft (A36TN or 58P).

BED-OSU pulled up 3 choices, a Beech400A, Challenger300, and a G650. The
Challenger and G650 couldn't use OSU, but that wasn't called out quite
explicitly enough (IMO), and each chose a different alternate airport, neither
of which chose CMH, which is overwhelmingly the logical alternative (IMO).

Similarly, booking that same trip from LWM only offered the two larger
aircraft, with a departure alternate of ORH (rather than the closer and more
sensible BED).

Our other common trip is to 60J, and the site chose ILM as the alternate
(rather than CRE or MYR).

Realistically, you may need to start with street addresses to better inform
the alternate airports. It's often the case that a charter customer won't know
the possible airports, and blindly choosing an alternate without knowing where
the customer wants to be is playing that game one hand tied behind your back.

Searching 8pax OSU-LAS in the middle of summer, I was offered a Hawker 800
departing OSU non-stop to LAS. To say that's a snug departure is an
understatement; I doubt that would be a balanced field departure and under
Part 135, that's going to be a no-go I'm pretty sure.

I also wasn't getting offered turboprops for some of the short searches I did.
Makes little sense to fly a jet on a <30 minute hop generally, but that was
all I got in New England for the searches I did.

You're trying to disrupt a market that's pretty difficult technically to make
fully online. I suspect you're going to get a lot of bookings that end up not
flyable as offered (and still have some work to do on the alternate
proposals). Similar to dbenj's feedback, I also think your pricing is well
above market, especially with jet fuel as cheap as it is now. That'll be easy
for you to fix though.

I definitely wish you guys the best of luck, and happy to give any additional
feedback if you want it.

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charlesdenault
Thanks for the feedback! We're working on a more elegant solution to handle
the alternate airports, balanced field length, etc. We're erring on the safe
side right now, but there are always these edge cases.

As far as the prices, we're working on adding more aircraft everyday (lower
repositioning costs, greater aircraft choices, etc). I'd love to ping you for
some further discussion, especially around alternates.

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sokoloff
Email's in my profile; happy to chat more. (And just to be perfectly clear, I
don't think you're erring on the safe side on the 8 pax + 2 crew H800 out of
5000' runway at KOSU for a 1525nm non-stop. ;) The good news is the charter
pilots will reject that; the bad news is your customers won't get what they
thought they bought.)

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rokhayakebe
If you've booked a private jet and paid north of $75k round trip, can you
please share what was the rational behind it?

Note: I am genuinely curious.

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captaincrunch
It's very convenient, comfortable, and you don't feel like part of the heard.
I often got sick flying on an airline (ton of germs on those things) and would
be off work for a couple days - I can make the cost of a flight in a couple
days if I am not sick - so thats my justification. Beyond that, being driven
onto the taxi way and walking onto a jet on my schedule is perfect. We don't
wait in lines, walk through customs or anything like that, in fact, customs
usually comes on the jet.

Proof/My business partner and I -
[http://imgur.com/NNT96Ap](http://imgur.com/NNT96Ap)

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rokhayakebe
Thanks for the info CaptainCrunch.

 _I can make the cost of a flight in a couple days_

This will be my motivational quote for the rest of the year.

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jypepin
Funny I was exactly looking for a private jet for a group, and could not find
a good website with quotes.

That would be nice to be able to NOT filter by number of passengers, since I
have no idea how much a jet cost and I want to see multiple planes and compare
prices per capacity (I 'm with getting 5 people or 20 and go with either if
cheaper or nicer plane).

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sokoloff
Search for just 1 pax will probably do what you want, but there aren't enough
operators in inventory now to really get a good feel.

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captaincrunch
I'd love to see you guys add Canada/USA routes - I'm using (well, my assistant
uses) [http://www.aircharterservice.ca](http://www.aircharterservice.ca) to
book all my private flights.

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charlesdenault
We're adding more inventory regularly and Canada is pretty high on the
priorities. I'd love to discuss and get more feedback from you if you're open
to it. Thanks!

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cbzink000
I'm seeing several Hawaii airports (mostly interested in Maui) listed in your
directory, but I'm none of them appear in destination field when searching.
Any ideas why?

