Social Media and Business Aviation: What if?
Part 4 in a Series on Social Media and Business Aviation: Written In Collaboration with Jay Deragon
Over the past few weeks I have posted several articles on social media – the new method of communicating to the market. I am an admitted novice in the world of social media and technology, but my eyes are starting to open to the possibilities created when social technology and business aviation collide.
We have discussed the opportunity social media presents to fight the war the airlines have declared on general aviation by getting our message out in an unfiltered way. We have also discussed social media as a means to increase our visibility to the market as well as to communicate with that market in order to innovate and better meet its needs on its own terms. All of these are game changing strategies.
So now I want to ask some what ifs!
What if there was a social grid or network built for the purpose of becoming the e-marketplace for private and business aviation travel solutions? What if this social network allowed, encouraged and facilitated the market to come together to aggregate a demand that is currently outside of the supply that traditional channels of distribution make available to the market?
What if the market could then go to the suppliers of private aviation and request trips or routes of travel where individual travelers could buy seats, filling the aircraft, driving the price down? Maybe the price would still not be as low as mass transit airline travel, but still would be much lower than today’s pricing of private aircraft flights.
What if travelers could input their travel profiles into the social grid in such a way as to speak to the entire market and to form affinities around common travel patterns? Would travelers be willing to share their travel information with the market in a profile, sharing where they go, when and how often? Would travelers talk to each other about their travel needs if those conversations led to more new, innovative and efficient travel solutions than have ever existed before?
What if all air charter providers and small scheduled airlines (niche airlines) could input supply into the grid, including empty legs? What if on-demand charters were quoted instantly so that the market had real time visibility to the solutions they need? What if all of these suppliers could participate on a level playing field and in a system that costs the users only when a transaction takes place?
What if the other parts of the business travel supply chain were able to participate as well? Would the hotels, resorts, rental car and limousine services have an interest in participating in the grid?
What if private aviation operators could collaborate to create a bigger market? What if we woke up someday and realized that we’ve been monopolized by technology controlled by some organization that isn’t even in our business? What if we all created a new collective “social grid” in which the general market of travelers realized they could use our system rather than the old commercial system?
What if we could collectively reinvent ourselves as an industry with the aim of serving the larger market? What would be required? Who would agree to collaborate? Who would agree that if we don’t, someone else will? And we’ll all lose when we should have been leading all along?
If we could simply start to build a dialog around all of these questions what could we do? Should we do it? If not, then let’s not even try to answer these questions. Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing. Einstein once said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” What happens if we all decide to be sane?
If you think we need to do something else then join me and invite others to join us in creating a new future where we can all win.
Who will jump into the dialog? Who will invite others to do so as well? Is there anyone out there?
Where are the answers to all of these “what ifs”? Could they be out there in the market of conversations that could create the new system that creates the answers?
The answers are out there in the minds of people wanting to create a new future. Are you one of them?
3 Responses
to “Social Media and Business Aviation: What if?”
2 Trackback(s)
- Dec 17, 2009: uberVU - social comments
- Feb 3, 2010: Social Media and Business Aviation: What if? | Plane Conversations | Tailspin
A lot of what if’s, and you highlight some good points. We are trying to get our social supply chain system off the ground, we added group functionality so that like with other sites you can develop groups to discuss and generate changes in our industry. The key difference is getting people to join and share their ideas on our system which also has integrated CRM, Office management, contact management, daily planner, marketing and Instant messaging has been very challenging. I would really like people like you to join and start a group, share ideas, effect change and involve others. I know that other networking sites have been around longer, but I cant think of one that offers all your functionality in one place. Check us out, see for yourself, give us input. like with our government, it is our job to ask questions and propose different solutions. Thank you.