Plane Conversations

In an April 18 post on the Relationship Economy blog site, Dan Robles asks, “Does Money = Time?”

The true value proposition of private aviation when compared against the airlines, or air mass transit as we call it, is the time savings in travel. In all cases, flying by means of private aircraft saves time over traveling by airlines. And this does not account for the often negative experience of airline travel that encroaches on your time before and after the travel is done – fatigue, frustration, missed schedules, fitting your life to the travel versus fitting the travel to your life, cancellations, weather worries, oversold flights, etc., etc., etc.

Privacy and luxury are benefits of private air travel but for our industry to truly grow past its present point, in the new economy, it has to be about time.   

Here are some excerpts from Dan’s blog post. As you read this, think about what we do in our business and whether we can be a part of the solution:

Whoever said “Time Is Money” got it backwards. Anyone who still believes this is now moving backwards in economic time.

Reality is simple: Money is time.

We pay to extend our live, we pay to have a good time, we wonder what time it is, we share time, we exchange time, we invest time. Everybody has a limited amount of time on Earth and everybody is competing for a slice of someone else’s time. Money is just the scorecard in a game of time.

Time is limited for everyone on Earth.

Sure, we often trade our time for money, but we also trade our time for many things; our children, families, travels, experiences, sleep, and consuming products and services. There is no other factor to which our behavior is more determined than time. Everyone does whatever they know to make the best use of their time.

The next economic paradigm will be time based (as the scarce resource) and will probably look very similar to the one we know and understand today. The difference is that everyone will interact with the clock instead of the dollar.

In the next generation of social media applications we see that value will be derived from time saved or punished for time squandered. People will behave in a manner dependent on how much their time is worth.

The new business models will compete against time, rather than price. Quality will be measurable by anyone. Precision and accuracy will be rewarded and manipulation will be punished. At the end of the day, Money is Time and the quality of time is the quality of money.

The Future of Money is the future of Time:

It’s hard to imagine any product or service that wastes people’s time surviving past the next decade. It is hard to image any future innovation that does not save time over whatever it replaces. It is hard to imagine the basis of any currency without a time value.

So when you read what Dan is saying, do you see the opportunity that is shouting at those of us in private aviation services? If you take out the words “Social Media Applications” and insert “Travel Solutions” in Dan’s statement above, it reads like this: In the next generation of ”travel solutions” we see that value will be derived from time saved or punished for time squandered.

I believe our industry has the ability to bring value by saving time as opposed to air mass transit  travel that squanders time. It is up to us to make sure we are part of the new economic paradigm.

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