Legs Vs. Seats, How To Fill Both
Private aviation uses the term “legs” to indicate lanes of travel from point A to B. In order to optimize the productivity of an aircraft the destination flight needs to be booked as well as the return flight. However, most return flights from B to A go empty and the originator of the charter has to pay for unused “legs and seats”.
Seems to me that such a scenario represents sub-optimization of the aircraft. Sub-optimization is a waste of an asset and increases the cost of using the asset; thus, limiting the market of users of the asset. Make sense?
Now if we examined new methods aimed at optimizing use of private aviation the answer lies in filing both legs, or expanding legs, and seats with business travelers wanting to go from different points within a “leg” to another point. The model is exactly how commercial aviation maximizes sales of seats within legs they have determined as “used frequently” by the general public.
Applying New Methods To Private Aviation
Private aviation has a much larger reach in terms of probable destinations for business travelers. The private aviation industry serves a larger scope of available destinations than does commercial aviation. The problem is that each operator runs their “legs and seats” in a silo of distribution and market awareness. Most operators serve regular customers and wait for the phone to ring to initiate a flight. In other words, operators usually wait until the market comes to them rather than going to a larger market of probable travelers needing to get to and from a destination.
Each private aviation operator runs a sub-optimized system and, given today’s economic climate, they are all feeling the reduction of old utilization models and have assets sitting around waiting to be used. The collective waste of all these sub-optimized systems represents billions of dollars annually and many operators will not survive.
What If?
What if there was a new system aimed at optimization of all available equipment, planes, legs and seats? What if each operator’s individual system was effectively and efficiently communicated to the general market of business travelers? In other words, if an open source grid of legs and seats were made available to anyone and everyone, and said grid was effectively communicated to the general public of business travelers, what would happen? The likely results would be the the ability to lower the cost of private aviation, which would expand the market to the general public of business travelers. Subsequently, operators would have the opportunity to optimize legs, seats and related assets. The general business traveler would be given the opportunity for a much more efficient and accommodating experience than commercial travel and while saving time and money. While the cost may be slightly higher than using fixed routes on commercial aircraft, the time saving and experiential factor would easily justify the increase cost.
Sound crazy? Not really when you consider the power and reach of social technology which could easily communicate available legs and seats to a very large audience. The technology to create an entire private aviation social grid is readily available and the use of social technology would provide the reach to the general business traveler.
Can you tell I want to go back to using private aviation vs. commercial? I am trying to stir thinking out of the box and collaboration for the benefit of all. Leadership and innovation would be needed to capture market opportunity. Does this make any sense?
What say you?
4 Responses
to “Legs Vs. Seats, How To Fill Both”
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- Nov 13, 2009: uberVU - social comments
I think this idea makes perfect sense. Both charter and fractional operations have long suffered from “dead head” percentages that in some cases have come close to half the legs flown This is not only lost time, but lost money. While some operators have tried positioning programs to help bring that percentage down, it has been a struggle.
The trick is to either use the existing social media technology or design software that could utilize the current technology (something like Twitter deck), that could give both businesses and clients easy access to open legs and in necessary, preferred pricing to fill seats. Its time to actively hunt business rather than “waiting for the phone to ring.” We simply cannot wait for business to come to us. Business aviation still has a tremendous benefit regarding the “time value of money.” I think some of that has gotten lost in the general press rhetoric of the past 18 months.
One of the issues in the charter aviation world has been the extremely competative nature of each operator, especially in the last year or so. What if a collaborative effort could be made amongst 2 or more operators that would be of benefit to both? If such an idea stated in the above post proves profitable, might it also benefit others? You also have the power of the additonal uplift from your collective partnership and a further decrease in empty legs or the need to “farm out” flights on peak days. In this environment its a radical idea, but as mentioned in an earlier blog, working collectively has much benefit to all in the Business Aviation community.
What about companies that are already out there, trying to make empty legs more transparent and accessible for flyers? For example, CharterX – which will not only post your slots to an empty leg bulletin board (and do it automatically, if you have scheduling software that syncs), but allows you to email your availability to email lists. It seems to me folks are working on this problem already in terms of technology.
The key, I think, is in the statement you make here “effectively and efficiently communicated to the general market of business travelers” — the folks that know about CharterX are already “in the know”, aviation savvy and likely to already recognize the opportunities. We need to figure out how to educate the business traveler that systems like this exist already. We have to communicate to business travelers differently than we communicate to aviation insiders.
If I try to put myself in the shoes of a business traveler, I would crave being educated over being lectured. What I mean by that is even though I travel fairly often, I think I would get annoyed with being bombarded by empty leg announcements on my twitter or facebook streams. Especially since I would only be interested in very specific itineraries when I was planning a trip.
I think people are fairly used to navigating online to build itineraries — maybe instead of building something huge from the get-go, we just start with the basics and get the word out that there are more options than slogging through conventional air travel sites. Get the word out about CharterX or Avinode. Do you remember how you first learned about Orbitz.com or Expedia.com? Or more recently, Kayak? Maybe an outreach campaign similar to that could be helpful for folks already accumulating the data – like these online databases. I could help to build private aviation as a more mainstream option.
Great post this will really help me.