Plane Conversations

The Economist magazine recently wrote an article in favor of airlines unbundling fees.

Ancillaries; You Know They Make Sense

Unfortunately, it seems that the benefits arise more from an accounting failure followed by a PR sleigh of hand than any actual rational corporate service improvement initiative.

By charging fees, once neglected baggage service departments have become star revenue performers for airlines. Department managers can now justify new technology and equipment. Where before, baggage service only represented a cost, it now provides millions in revenue.

It turns out that by charging money for baggage fees, those fees are entered into the revenue column of the accounting statement so they appear as an asset.  In the past, baggage handling was in the cost column and appeared as a liability.  From MBA 101, the function of a corporation is to collect all assets and unload all liabilities.  But more than that, the once invisible baggage handling department can now SEE their value.  The baggage handling manager can now grab some of that money to buy improved equipment, training, and qualified personell.

And The Carousel Spins

Of course the PR department will twist this into a statement of American Individuality by claiming that “freedom is all about having choices” and “our customers deserve a benevolent freedom fighter in the airlines to provide them with such choices”.  If there is discontent, this is due to a fault of the passenger, not the airline:

Passengers will continue to complain about being nickel-and-dimed, but it may be that they are making false comparisons between the years when everything was included—but the ticket prices were higher—and these current, à-la-carte times. “When a la carte shopping is successfully implemented, it’s not an evil method. Quite to the contrary, it’s the ultimate compliment to the consumer—it acknowledges their right to choose.”

Now I have to ask, what is so hard about handling baggage?  Why is this such a complicated accounting problem?  How many other “material handling” problems, or account balancing problems do airline have difficult mastering?  Seriously.

Social Flights offers service into Nashville from Branson, Milwaukee, Austin.  We also offer flights from any where your group or organization originates.  Take advantage of the taste of country package or any of the exciting vacation packages below.  

Country music fans get a taste of Nashville’s most popular attractions when they visit Gaylord Opryland Resort!

Availability: Select dates through October, 2012

(Note: This package is not available October 5-7, 2012, due to the Opry’s 87th Birthday Celebration)

Duration: 2 nights (extra nights may be available at prevailing rates)

To Book: Call 1-866-972-6779

Package includes:

• Two night room accommodations at Gaylord Opryland Resort
• Reserved seat ticket to the Grand Ole Opry – the show that made country music famous! Valid Tuesday, Friday or Saturday (plus special Wednesday performances July 18 & 25 and August 1 & 8 only)
  -or-
  Reserved seat ticket to Opry Country Classics at the Ryman Auditorium; this show shines a spotlight on the classic country songs that have defined country music for generations of fans (Thursdays, March 29 – May 24 and October 4 – 25)
  -plus-
• Grand Ole Opry House Backstage Tour
• Ryman Auditorium Museum Self-Guided Tour
• Voucher toward a meal at the Opry Backstage Grill ($20 per adult, $10 per child age 4-11)
• General Jackson Showboat lunch or dinner cruise and show

Package price: 
With General Jackson lunch cruise: $280* 
With General Jackson dinner cruise: $305*

*Rate is per person, based on double occupancy for traditional accommodations, plus applicable tax, resort fee and parking. Extra nights and atrium upgrades may be available at prevailing rates. Rate subject to change without notice. Restrictions apply.

Suggested Add-ons: 

(per person, plus tax)

• Shuttle transportation to Ryman Auditorium; inquire about rates when making package reservation
• Enjoy lunch, dinner, or a concert at the Wildhorse Saloon®
• A relaxing spa treatment at Relâche – The Spa at Gaylord Opryland
• Gaylord Springs™ Golf Links – Tee times available 30 days out
• General Jackson® – Showboat luncheon cruise and show
• Enjoy a concert at the historic Ryman Auditorium

Current Nashville Vacation Packages and Specials at Gaylord Opryland

• A Night at the Opry – Our most popular vacation package!
• Summer Fun with Shrek & Friends
• The DreamWorks Birthday Celebration
• Taste of Country – 2-night Package!
• Gaylord Hotels’ Unforgettable Anniversary 
• Remember Romance – 1 or 2 nights
• Gaylord Hotels’ Birthday Getaway
• Rooms for Good™ – Reward yourself by helping others
• Thank You Thursdays – Get 40%* savings on Thursdays. TN residents only.
• Nashville Nights – 1 and 2-night packages available
• 2012 CMA Music Festival / Fan Fair Package
• Opry’s 87th Birthday – 2-night Package!
• New Year’s Eve Celebration 2012 – A Southern Gospel Festival

• Radisson Hotel Opryland

Frontier Airlines recently announced it’s dropping nonstop service from Milwaukee to six cities, cutting the number of daily flights nearly in half. Effective in April, the airline will end direct flights to Grand Rapids, Dallas-Fort Worth, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Newark. Frontier’s daily departures will be reduced from 32 to 18.

While Social Flights is announcing new air service between Milwaukee, Branson, Nashville, and Austin – Frontier Airlines is announcing the reduction of services and staff from Milwaukee.  The following report from media FOX6now and Milwaukee Business Journal highlight some of the local implications, impacts, broken promises and lost dreams.

According to a notice filed Monday with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the layoffs are expected to occur in April. The notice states that 230 of the employees are flight crew members who will be reassigned to bases outside of Milwaukee.

230 of the 446 layoffs will be reassigned – as will their families, their children will move out of school, houses will be liquidated in a poor RE market, and communities will lose trust anchors. The new cuts are on top of Frontier‘s decision last fall to eliminate routes to eight other destinations.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett released a statement Monday after these layoffs were announced, saying: “The loss of 500 jobs is a setback for the region.  My hope is that other airlines will step in and fill the void in this critically important market.”

Frontier is leaving Milwaukee for reasons that would also hold for every other airline; fuel prices, labor prices, large jets, corporate ROI thresholds, etc.  Meanwhile, Social Flights operates under public charter regulations organizing local private operators and supports them with modern aircraft allowing communities to access important hubs as well as sister cities (such as Grand Rapids).

The Community Remembers the promises:

“When that whole deal was made, when Republic bought Midwest and Frontier, there were all these promises made to Milwaukee that they were not only going to keep the service here, but that they were going to bring in hundreds and hundreds of jobs,” Rovito said.

Instead, nearly 800 positions have been cut since November, and the most recent wave of cuts will move more than 200 jobs out of Milwaukee, while completely getting rid of another 200. “Just on its face, it’s really bad news for Milwaukee travelers,” Rovito said.

Who holds the cards?

Communities go through great efforts to attract air service from promising yields to providing public infrastructure to enduring noise and traffic – the airlines take this completely for granted.

Fewer flights means it will be more difficult for travelers to get to their destinations, and also likely more expensive. “It was a convenient flight for me in this particular instance,” Scott Sowa, who was on a Frontier flight heading to Grand Rapids, said. “I would hate to lose that convenience.”

Apparently, communities are not what Frontier needs to remain profitable.  They no longer need Milwaukee because they found business elsewhere.  They are an airline – they can go elsewhere…. they are not a community.

Where communities are the contingency plan

In a statement, the company says: “The reduction in service is another step in our continued effort to ensure that Frontier is a competitive and sustainably profitable airline.”

In other words, ‘Their survival is contingent upon your loss – not your gain.’ FOX6 tried to get in touch with someone from Frontier Airlines Monday, but our calls were unreturned.

Beginning in June 2012, Branson Air in cooperation with CFM aviation and Social Flights, is offering a limited time 79 dollar special on air service between Milwaukee Wisconsin and Branson Missouri. This price will not last long since the route is filling fast.  The next threshold special is 99 dollars…and there is no wonder why tickets are selling fast.

This announcement comes on the heels of air service between Nashville and Branson as well as Austin and Branson.  All continuing flights connect all cities.  This is a big deal for people who travel between secondary markets.

If you are asking yourself what you would do when you get to your final destination,  just check out these posts:

102 Things to do in Branson

101 Things to do in Austin

 101 Things to do in Milwaukee

102 Things to do in Nashville

Or, think of it this way:  

Do a Google search on “Milwaukee Facebook” and you’ll received 183 Million returns.  Next, perform a search on terms: “Branson MO Facebook” and you’ll receive 3.7 Million returns. Finally, do a search on the terms “Branson MO Milwaukee WI Facebook” and you’ll received 1.1 Million returns.

Next, search for airfare from Milwaukee to Branson you’ll find the following result:

NOW, look at the flight from Branson to Milwaukee !!

Hmmm … why does it cost 200 dollars more and take 4 more hours (stationary) to fly from Branson to Milwaukee than from Milwaukee to Branson???

A recipe for opportunity

While this is far from a scientific research study, there is little doubt that many people in Branson know somebody in Milwaukee and vice versa.  There are many people in Milwaukee that can find a reason to hop a quick plane out to Branson with all of their friends.  Look at the disadvantage that the smaller community has – small communities are  SUBSIDIZING the larger community!!  The distance is the same so the price should be the same.

By extension – look at all of the communities on the map above that social flight can connect for 1/2 the price and half the transit time of the airlines

Most importantly, there are many things that were never economically possible between these two cities,  but now are.  That is what opportunity is made of.

People who follow Social Flights know that our business model is hugely disruptive to the airlines.  They know that Social Flights opens new frontiers of opportunity.  They know that Social Flights liberates stranded communities from Airline Chess Masters.  With air service between Branson and Austin for under 100 dollars – this is only the beginning.

So the choice is simple;

There are hundreds of things to do with millions of friends, colleagues, relatives, and business relationships for 200 dollars on a flight that lasts less than two hours. Or, spend close to 500 dollars on a 8 hour boondoggle losing two days of work and spending an two extra nights in a hotel with people you don’t know.  The choice is obvious.

Who knew that having fun could be such serious business?

Branson Air, in cooperation with CFM aviation and Social Flights, is offering a special on air service between Austin Texas and Branson Missouri. If you book through Social Flights, you’ll receive an additional 20 dollars discount for a limited time when you mention this post.

If you are wondering what to do when you get to your final destination,  just check out these two posts:

102 Things to do in Branson          101 Things to do in Austin

Or, think of it this way:  

I did a google search on “Austin Tx Facebook” and received 134 Million returns.  Then, I did a search on “Branson MO Facebook” and received 3.7 Million returns. Finally, I did a search on the term “Branson MO Austin TX Facebook” and received 1.1 Million returns.

Next I did a search on airfare Branson to Austin and found the following result:

A recipe for opportunity

While this is far from a scientific research study, there is little doubt that many people in Branson know somebody in Austin and vice versa.  There are many people in Austin that can find a reason to hop a quick plane out to Branson with all of their friends.

Most importantly, there are many things that were never economically possible between these two cities,  but now are.  That is what opportunity is made of.

People who follow Social Flights know that our business model is hugely disruptive to the airlines.  They know that Social Flights opens new frontiers of opportunity.  They know that Social Flights liberates stranded communities from Airline Chess Masters.  With air service between Branson and Austin for under 100 dollars – this is only the beginning.

So the choice is simple;

There are hundreds of things to do with millions of friends, colleagues, relatives, and business relationships for 160 dollars on a flight that lasts less than two hours. Or, spend close to 500 dollars on a 15 hour flight losing two days of work and spending an two extra nights in a hotel with people you don’t know.  The choice is obvious.

Who knew that having fun could be such serious business?

At Social Flights, we are continually amazed at the communities that we work with looking for an opportunity to bypass commercial airline service.  Communities know what they want and they know where they want to go – most importantly, in the great American Tradition, they are not waiting for someone else to do it for them.   Tri-Cities Tennessee is one such community.

In Tennessee and Virginia the name “Tri-Cities” refers to the region comprising the cities of Kingsport, Johnson City and Bristol and the surrounding smaller towns and communities in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. All three of the principal cities are located in the extreme northeastern corner of Tennessee, while Bristol has a Twin city of the same name on the Virginia side.

Tri Cities is one of those great places that few people know about.  They represent a vibrant American community of over 500,000 located in a beautiful part of the country with mild temperate weather yet in close proximity to many economically important places such as Nashville, Washington, DC, New York, Atlanta, St. Louis, etc.   When airlines cut service to a community like Tri-Cities, they cut off a half million people from the vast economic opportunity.

Similarly, the deprive many people of a wonderful place to visit, vacation, or  relocate to.  By all accounts, Tri-Cities is a magnificent place to raise a family.  Tri-Cities has an abundance of recreational opportunities in nearby Lake Boone, the Blue Ridge Mountains, rivers and forest. Real estate is still reasonably priced.

Social Flights is looking forward to an opportunity to provide air service to Tri-Cities and the remarkable people who make up that community.  It is our sincere desire to create an air service plan that meets the needs of so many 500K population communities across the United States.  With Tri-Cities, we all get there together!

Tri-cities Events

Social Flights, in coordination with Branson Air Express and Corporate Flight Management, Inc. announce air service between Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Branson, Missouri.

Near-daily public charter service begins on May 12, 2012.  The flight time is approximately 2 hours and the current one-way price is $144.00.  By comparison, a commercial flight on the same route would take 7 hours (+TSA) with a stop in Denver and a cost of $210.00 dollars each way.

This is important because Social Flights represents the regionalization of air service by providing the right sized aircraft to meet the needs of the smaller communities without hub airports. These are the type of routes that the commercial carriers would never fly direct.   As such, traveling is far more time consuming and expensive than it otherwise needs to be.  Now, Social Flight filling the void.

The Milwaukee metropolitan area has an estimated population of over 2 million people and ranks fifth in the United States in terms of the number of Fortune 500 company headquarters as a share of the population. Milwaukee has one of the highest per capita student populations in North America, ranking 6th among U.S. and Canadian cities in number of college students per 100 residents, according to a January 2000 study from McGill University

Branson is a city in Taney County in the U.S. state of Missouri. Branson has long been a popular destination for vacationers from Missouri and neighboring areas. The construction of music theaters by nationally-known performers along Highway 76 has increased Branson’s popularity as a tourist destination.  Branson draws tourists from all over the World.

Social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) are no longer just the shiny new soapbox for advertisers, they have become powerful tools for organizing communities.

We all know that social media campaigns have become the PR machine of the modern airline, but they still fail to understand the difference between community awareness and harnessing the power of community engagement.

Who has time to Twitter?  

Many private operators are too focused on the day-to-day business of keeping their fleet in top readiness to start the long haul learning curve of social media marketing and SEO.

As a result, those same few brokers and agents (you know who they are) appear on the top of the search engine listing even in your city search!   While paid search placement may buy some brand awareness for the brokers, only active blogging, worthy cross linking and strategic partnerships produce the powerful engagements that bring you customers who bring you customers who bring you customers, and so on.

Building these relationships can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. 

Social Flights has trained and experienced account managers that can efficiently carry out the most productive social media presence for  private operators and their respective traveler community, economic development agencies, and hospitality partners.

Social Flights offers:

• Syndication of Social Flights blog articles
• Unique blog contents specific to your operation and community.
• Cross linkages with other operators, tourism boards, hospitality, and corporate business centers
• Strategic Twitter campaigns, Facebook pages, G+, press release support, and cross posting with sister cities
• Package formation with festivals, recreation, conventions, and events; locally and across North America
• Cooperative marketing with sister city operators.

Social Flights draws on our unique experience in ride sharing systems and yield management for private aircraft inventory. Social Flights uses up-to-the-minute social media techniques to organize communities around available private aircraft capacity, public charter opportunities, and empty leg fulfillment.

Social Flights draws from our national databases of event organizers, universities, corporate clusters, and diverse industries allowing us to help you identify, influence, and match supply and demand for private air service priced on a per-seat basis.   This allows travelers to form a true comparison of the “time-value” of private air service versus commercial air service.

Finally, we also provide you with ways to spot opportunities that commercial airlines simply cannot serve at any price.

Please consider adding Social Flights Services to your marketing mix.   Give us a call for a free strategy session and let’s see where we can integrate your air service operation with the entire national travel services industry.

Carol Pucci from Seattle Times recently wrote this article about her experience with airlines that code-share:

“With more airlines marketing each other’s flights as code shares, it’s getting harder to figure out who’s actually doing the flying. It also makes it a bit harder to find the best price.  Code shares are marketing alliances that allow airlines to sell seats under their own name for flights operated by a partner airline. The airlines share in the revenues and passengers can earn and use their frequent-flier miles on either carrier.”

The irony is that on-line travel agents started a price war that has eliminated the incentive for airlines to distinguish themselves on “service” or even distance. This relieved them of the responsibility to excel. The underlying assumption imposed on the passenger is that all airlines are equal and all flights are the same – until they are not.  For example: Air France and Delta are code share partners:

Carol further writes: “Air France was selling a Seattle/Zagreb (Croatia) round trip, with a connection through Paris, for $1,214 versus $1,408 on Delta for the same flights, a savings of $194″.  

The law of one price

The problem with code sharing is not that you fly on the other partner’s aircraft, the problem is that the price is does not correlate with the exact same product, rather, it varies by whom you buy the ticket – that, by any definition, is broker’s world.

Private air service carriers and charter operators currently suffer from an extreme form of broker’s world that not only prevents carriers from code sharing, they also keep prices unpublished so the customer has no idea what they are paying for.

Of Brokers and Fixers

Imagine if Air France and Delta and United all had to operate different planes and there was no way for travelers to compare compare prices. Instead, a group of brokers could manipulate supply and demand to maximize their own profits. So for example, if the airplanes fly 1/2 empty, then brokers could charge double the airfare.  Obviously, this is an extremely inefficient way to operate an air service industry.

Fly Social in more ways than one

Social Flights is a platform that accommodates code sharing among many partner air service operators while also standardizing the cost of flying on a per-mile / per-time basis.  Social Flights performs the same yield management operations for a diverse inventory of private jets as the commercial carriers perform for their shared fleets.

The Social Flights platform permits the private air service operators to sell charter lift on a per-seat, per-leg basis.  Instead of generating dead heads (empty legs) operators can code share such that every flight is a primary leg.  Operators who are closest to the passenger will inherently be lower cost since a “re-positioning” fee would not be needed. This alone may cut the price of private travel by 50% (half the cost without dead/reposition fee) while also increasing operator revenue by 50% (by doubling the size of the market).

You can call it a code-share or you can call it a ride-share, but Social Flights calls it a breakthrough in air service efficiency.

Time to iron your favorite jersey, slap some war paint on and dust off that foam finger: March Madness is about to begin! Whether you’re an NCAA Basketball superfan or a casual bystander, everyone can get swept up in the magic and drama of the Big Dance.

The trouble with trying to see a game, is that nobody knows who will be eliminated and when.  So you can’t book airline tickets to a final four game 4 weeks in advance because you don’t know if your team will be there at the chosen venue.  Airlines can’t add seats to a route 4 weeks in advance either because they don’t know where the fans are flying from.  This invariably means a March Madness Rush for transportation, hotels, rental cars, vacation days, both going to and coming home from the game.

Fear Not!

Social Flights has over 90 partner operators with over 500 aircraft evenly distributed across the United States.  As soon as you know your team will be in the series, you and your friends can book a private jet to the game.  The airplane will take you to the game, wait while you watch, and bring you home the same day for a price that will surprise you.  No missed work days, and not fighting for a hotel room, and no rental cars.  You can party all the way out and all the way back.  Priceless.

Give us a call, let’s build your strategy.  You call the shots and let Social Flights deliver you to all the March Madness without all the madness

March madness schedule