Plane Conversations

If improving the aviation system is disruptive, then call us revolutionaries.

We could say that Social Flights is disruptive to the commercial aviation system, except that we serve markets that the commercial aviation industry has rejected.

We could say that we compete with the airlines, except we provide services that would be impossible for the commercial aviation system to deliver efficiently.

We could say that we found a way to exploit an inefficient market, except that we actually make that market more efficient.

Social Flights is not an airline.

In simplest terms, Social Flights is a data platform for private aviation.  The Social Flights platform will “systemize” the operations of up to 15,000 private aircraft across up to 5000 North American Airports.  The beneficiaries will be travelers, aircraft operators, and the communities they support. We’ll even help the airlines do what they do better.

Where is the pain?

•  Airlines are pulling out of smaller markets effectively isolating millions of people
•  Smaller communities are cut off from the global economy
•  The “Real Cost” to travelers flying into and out of smaller communities is stifling.
•  The Private Aviation industry is manipulated by brokers; 40% of private flights are empty.
•  The Hub and Spoke system serves large airplanes, not people
•  Travelers have few other travel options; driving is difficult and trains are sparse.
•  Very low utilization of private jet assets vs. commercial jet assets

Where is the opportunity?

• Next Generation air traffic management/control will open thousands of airports to ATC
• A huge inventory of efficient short haul aircraft is available.
• Empty legs on existing private flights are available
• Favorable FAA and DOT regulatory environment in “Public Charter” classification
• Millions of people travel to their “Social Networks” not their hubs and spokes
• Communities are willing to participate in their own air-service destiny

What is the solution?

CASP: Community Air Service Program

Social Flights deploys turbine powered commuter aircraft to small communities to provide frequent direct service to the nearest major hub allowing access to the world.

Uniform Booking Platform

The Social Flights provides operators with a free online scheduling and automating quoting system that will save them thousands of dollars per actual flight.

Systemized inventory listing

Operators effectively list their inventory and the system matches the right aircraft with the right mission thereby improving yields.

Ride Sharing

National itinerary allows for the sale of private jet service on a “per seat” basis instead of a customer chartering a whole jet.

Corporate Travel Programs

Corporate and VIP owners can increase Yield and utilization of aircraft for greater profits without sacrificing benefits of ownership.

Community Organization

Social Flights helps communities to determine where they want to fly.  We provide aircraft, training, operations, consulting, and regulatory authority to operate community charter operations.  Then we integrate the system into our Nationwide platform.

How do we do it?

Social Flights provides a single platform that acts as a clearinghouse for community information about REAL ASSETS – not just demographics for sale to marketers.

The social flights data can be used to create opportunities with a new class of business methods and applications from scheduling air service, to organizing a group of friends for Spring Break.

Social Flights allows smaller communities to access hub airport quickly, directly, frequently and inexpensively so that they can have economic access to the world.

Social Flights allows corporations and VIP aircraft owners to maximize the return on their aircraft investment while retaining the flexibility of ownership.

Social Flights liberates millions of people from the weaknesses of the increasingly fragile and segmented commercial aviation system while retaining the strengths of the hub airport efficiency.

Social Flights improves aviation.

I first discovered Keith Johnson’s blog, PlannerWire.net  starting with his article 13 Event Industry Blogs and Sites That You Should Check Out. Last July he updated the list to 44 event industry blogs that are important.  It it just too hard to resist not publishing the list he compiled.  Below (after a few of my comments) please find the best event planner blogs on the Internet, by Keith Johnson.

Why is an aviation company like Social Flights interested in event planners?

Nobody ever suggests that UAL or Alaska Airlines would ever ask anyone who intends to stay on the ground that day what their opinion is regarding airline service.  Airlines are too busy to worry about what happens before and after their clients board their planes.   The airlines are in the business of filling seats so why would they care about the communities whose collective posteriors occupy the spaces in between the lines on their balance sheets?

Maybe that’s the problem with airlines.

Social Flights has every intention to understand the needs of the travelers for whom we provide air service.  We exist because the communities we serve tell us to exist.  Communities of travelers tell us where to fly and when to fly.  They tell us how many people they need to arrive at any geographic point in North America and how many people to depart from any point.  Without event planners, there is no reason to travel.  Think about that for a moment.

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.

If we can’t hear our customers, it’s not because they don’t exist.  Social Flights understands that we live only because our travelers, operators, hospitality partners, and community entrepreneurs want us to exist.

Where silence was once golden, it is now dangerous.

Airlines have been learning the value of community with several recent social media campaigns -  but that is not the same as harnessing the power of the community.

Airlines still fail to understand that there will be consequences when they just pull service out of a community leaving tens of thousands of people functionally stranded; “because continued service would not be in the best interest of our valued shareholders”.    

The Power of Community

In response, communities have put high speed rail (HSR) back on the political ping pong table.  So the airlines complain that HSR will destroy aviation citing so many examples in other countries; “..and that would not be in the best interest of our valued shareholders”.    

The community response to overstressed hubs is government regulation that doubles fines for failure to meet minimum standards of service.  Again, the airlines complaint, “it’s not our fault, the other guys did it…increased regulations would not be in the best interest of our valued shareholders”.    

The community response to new service charges, lack of service, and overall traveler discontent is outlined in one of our recent blog posts “Forgiving is Not Forgetting” suggesting that up to 20% of all public social media communications are apologies “…because un-silenced customer would not be in the best interest of our valued shareholders”.    

Under New Management

The power of social media is the ability for communities to organize in their own best interest.  Now more than ever, Wall Street priorities are being driven by social priorities – not the other way around.  The implications for airlines are vast; perhaps completely redefining who the true shareholder actually is.

The Customer Tells Us What to Do

Standing on the front lines growing this phenomenon that we call “Social Flights”, it is completely obvious that we exist as a response to the new power of diverse communities to be self-deterministic.  Communities tell us what they want – they are joining around a strategy of self-ownership, self-destiny, and self-management.

Travelers, operators, hospitality partners, and community entrepreneurs are organizing around a new economic paradigm called “regionalization of travel services” – this means that small towns want to connect directly with each other and avoid the hubs altogether – as well as the airlines and their valued shareholders.

Nothing else changes except the community – nothing else has to.

Social Flights offers an array of services from private jet “code sharing” to public charter air service, to leasing/operating air service exclusively for a community under their direction.  When people start discovering the amount of time wasted and calculating the value of that loss, the benefit private air service becomes more and more attractive.

Keep talking, we’re listening

Hipmunk is our favorite OTA because they seriously get it.  Travelers want to get places easy, safe, and fast.

From Hipmunk Website:

As you know, we’re obsessed with taking the agony out of travel and providing you with the best options for your unique needs. In our dedication to make all traveling easier, we’re very excited to announce the availability of regional business jet service through our new partner, Linear Air. 

Linear Air is the premier air taxi operator in the US operating an exclusive fleet of Eclipse 500 Very Light Jets based at several convenient airports in the North East.

From The Linear Air Website:

Our mission is to democratize personal air travel. Traditional private jet travel is expensive. At Linear Air, we’ve found the perfect formula to turn it into an affordable productivity tool for people who value their time.

The Integration Has Begun

Now Linear Air and Hipmunk have achieved what may emerge as one of the most important innovations in air transportation.  Hipmunk and Linear Air have developed the ability to list private jet inventory along side Commercial Airline inventory.

Yes, private travel is expensive, but on a time/value analysis, there are many situations where private travel is categorically less “costly” than commercial airlines.

• Single day and weekend travel is virtually impossible with commercial airlines
• Commercial seats fill up and fares skyrocket close to departure date making it impossible to travel at the SOT (Speed Of Twitter)
• There are only 30 airline hubs for 50 States, and shrinking –  what’s wrong with this picture?
• Only 6 airports have direct train service and 12 connect to trains but only after a public transit hop – seriously, who is planning for seamless travel to the other half of the country?
• Countless businesses would use smaller airplanes on direct flights if they were available

A Future to Strive For

At Social Flights, we see a future where all private jet inventories can be listed on a per-seat basis and aligning into collective schedules.  We envision a future where private operators “code-share” inventory with other operators matching the right aircraft to the right mission at the right price without creating wasteful empty legs.  We foresee a market where operators are no longer dependent on brokers who hoard information only to maximize their fees.

At Social Flights, we see private aircraft as a way for the commercial airlines to reconnect with small communities.  Private air services can eliminate a great deal of fragility and volatility inherent in the hub and spoke system.  Private air service can absorb overbooked traffic or disaggregate low yield commercial flights into the private domain instead of leaving communities stranded .

Social Flights sees a future where small communities can lease, own, or contract to operate their own aircraft deploying them to the social graph representing their priorities, not the priorities of the corporate boardroom of an airline conglomerate.

A Giant Leap for Social Travelers

As such, we see that Hipmunk / Linear Air partnership as a critical first step in the ability for the information age to restructure the air transportation industry to reconnect the traveler to those special places where they can enjoy great conversations, fine food, and splendid views.

Every industry from agriculture to retail to energy production experiences unsellable merchandise.  Losses may be due to spoilage or theft or the inability to sell product within a certain expiration date – this is the case for empty legs.

Excess inventory is usually steeply discounted or written off as a loss. Costs that cannot be recovered are passed on to the customer.  If the customer “penalty” is too high, the demand shrinks and unsellable merchandise increases – This forces a contraction in the industry where demand can drive prices up further.

Suppose we know that the existing market for private travel can sustain $1.20 per seat mile price point such that an 8-seat airplane costs $10,000.00 to travel 1000 miles plus an empty return flight. Now suppose that the price per seat mile could be reduced to $.60 by sharing the plane with 16 people (8 in each direction)?  Would cutting the price in half effectively double the  number of people who could afford private travel?

Half empty or half full…or Both

We could certainly draw a line on a graph that would represent how market size would shift if we floated the value between $1.20 and $.60 per seat mile?  We can achieve this through any combination of inbound and outbound passengers between 8 and 16.

Social Flights is building a platform that can pool empty leg inventory by consolidating data provided by hundreds of operators.  The same platform can be used by communities to pool likely passengers attending events, sporting games, corporation travelers,  and conference attendees.  The same platform will be used to match the supply to the demand on a national level.  With a large enough system, it should no longer matter if it is an empty leg or a primary leg – all legs are primary.

The ability to salvage empty seat inventory while lowering costs for all seats will increase the size of the market for private jet services. The aircraft can fly more revenue miles per month in a larger market instead of remaining stationary waiting for a smaller market of passengers.  The airplane can deliver a higher net revenue per mile when both legs are full and priced correctly than when priced at cost-plus.

With Social Flights, operators can increase their volumes by lowering primary prices and adding return leg revenue. Owners will favor a operator that can deliver the highest utilization of their aircraft. Operators can now challenge brokers with a competitive alternate market for private service.  Travelers can now challenge the commercial airlines for service and time value.  At the end of the day, those who share information will have a competitive advantage over those who hoard information.

A visualization of Human Edits to Wikipedia where each color represents a different page

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal January 30, 2012 online edition: The Coming Tech-led Boom, identifies three technologies that will have as profound an impact on the world as electrification, telephony, and the dawn of the automobile age.

Even as we all see these technologies approaching, much like our 20th century contemporaries, most people cannot even begin to grasp the implications.  One thing is certain, industries that are unable to adapt, will not survive in their current state.

Social Flights is Flying into the next century with eyes wide open

From Wall Street Journal:

In January 2012, we sit again on the cusp of three grand technological transformations with the potential to rival that of the past century. All find their epicenters in America: big data, smart manufacturing and the wireless revolution.

Big Data and Wireless Technology

Big Data is at the core of some of what have become the most disruptive innovations of our time. Processing power, data storage, and data transmission are almost free.  The handheld device has more computing power than the supercomputers the 1970s.  The internet is moving into the cloud and away from the so called desk-top. All data is converging to a single place where it can be accessed and combined in countless ways.  Every second of every day creates an astonishing amount of empirical data that creates an unimaginable diversity of information and new knowledge.

At thge top of the food chain is Social media creating data – data does not create social media.  Data is made by people; data does not make people. People create, data does not, etc.  Likewise for most services in the next century; people will determine where airplanes fly – airplanes will no longer determine where people will can go.

A hub airport does little more than sort people and planes.  At Social Flights we use data to sort people and planes.  What if we could replace infrastructure with data? All this would take is for communities to “perform a simple calculation” among themselves.  Nothing is stopping this from happening today.  

From Wall Street Journal

The implications of the radical collapse in the cost of wireless connectivity are as big as those following the dawn of telegraphy/telephony. Coupled with the cloud, the wireless world provides cheap connectivity, information and processing power to nearly everyone, everywhere. This introduces both rapid change [and great opportunity].

Many people don’t understand how this could happen but Social Flights sees the possibility everyday, for example:  A handheld device will become the hub, the scheduling agent, the point of purchase, and the boarding pass – all with a swipe across the “reality augmented” sky.  The data already exists that can determine how many people from any point on earth intend to travel to any other point on earth and when.  Putting these data sets together creates a remarkably different landscape for air travel … and commerce in general.

Social Flights in new.  Social Flights is visionary – anyone who joins us on this voyage will be joining a revolution much greater than simply a ride sharing service. The point should be crystal clear - Social media creates data, data does not create social media.

Understand this, and you will understand Social Flights.   

The Federal Aviation Administration is more than just a dour old government bureaucracy.  The FAA also collects and publishes very important information.

This chart tells a very important story.  It says that the economy depends on aviation as much (if not more) than aviation depends on the economy.  So when Social Flights talks about private jets, it’s a whole lot more than wealthy people keeping their shoes on. Private aviation is in fact an important conduit for economic growth.  The way that we organize aviation assets such as aircraft, operators, airports, and support services can have a profound impact on a region.

For all economic development professionals:

These statistics should be stark.  If your community has air service, then the products and services that your community can trade will be 69 times higher in value than ground transportation such as trucking routes.   Yet many economic development reports treat these two modes roughly equal.

Furthermore, the market is huge; 1/2 Trillion dollars worth of products are flying over your head and 1/4 Trillion dollars worth of direct expenditure is looking down at you through an impenetrable window – EVERY YEAR.  And, that’s just the tangible value. Ideas, knowledge, wisdom, trust, influence, and experience are all extremely expensive to create on your own or by trial and error.  Yet this value is readily stored and transported in the cabins of aircraft.  This intangible value far out-weighs anything that can be carried in a truck.

What is truly surprising is that it only requires 2 million people to keep 2 trillion dollars worth of value aloft.  As such, every job that an economic development office creates in aviation, can potentially return 500,000 – 1,000,000 dollars in value to a community.  If a community is going to “buy jobs” with their taxes, they should buy aviation jobs.

Likewise, it would NOT be wise to lose control of this valuable resource to the whims of the airlines or outside corporate charter – their bottom line is not the same as yours.

Social Flights now brings a complete aviation solution to your community.  Our CASP (Community Air Service Program) can provide a community with modern aircraft, operational knowledge, and certification authority to operate your own public charter airline.  The connection is clear – airplanes equal money.  Give us a call, let us design your community air service program to integrate with your hotels, restaurants, tourism board, artistic community, and industries.

After all, that is what community is all about.

We recently stumbled upon a great group of people dedicated to the promotion of the fastest growing specialty in social media.   The position of  Community Manager, in our opinion, is growing to a size and scope that warrants its own professional classification.

via Community Managers: Where do you live? | My Community Manager.

What is MyCMGR.com?

Much like chemistry grew from alchemy (the task of trying to turn lead into gold) Community management is more than PR.  Community Management is the science of understanding how to create many important products from all the social elements.  At Social Flights, we are developing a new class of business methods that will rely heavily on the skills and tool set of the Community Manager. It is our suspicion that we are not alone in our requirements for this emerging profession.

Community Organization:

Socia Flights is more than a charter airline, we are a ride sharing system for private jets.  In order for our transactions to be most equitable to the traveler, we need the community to self-organize around a collection of airline inventory without using a hub airport.  This is not an easy problem to solve and herein lies the perfect game for the modern community manager.

Our vision for the future…

Social Flights envisions a Community Organizer to be able to look at data related to where people want to go and match it to available aircraft that can take them there.  Next, the organizer needs to find people who want to return on the empty airplane after the first passengers are dropped off.  Each time, the community organizer creates new data and feeds it back into the system.

As the system of data from all CO’s gets larger, it will become easier for the organizer to make connections in their specialty.   In the big picture; every shared asset  in a community from airplanes, cars, hotels, schools, and even government agencies can be operated by experienced community organizers.  Now imagine that all this can happen outside the construct of the familiar “corporation”

MyCMGR.com works with:

At Social Flights, we have said many times that nothing economic truly can happen until people get together to build something. Economics is the science of incentives and no incentive is stronger in the human species than family and community.  It does not take much of a chasm of reason to see why Google is so interested in travel and travel related properties.

Travel is the keystone for change; change of ideas, change of relationship, change of intentions, and change of markets.  A banker is not interested in money – they are interested in the rate of change of money; it’s called “interest rate”.  People are not interested in the same old story, they want the story to change – this is what keeps their “interest”

Again, we find Google at the center of the social “Interest Rate” in travel.  Don’t think for a minute that Facebook “timeline” is not also a move to capture how people change and react and adapt to the conditions around them. This almost makes it pointless for people to try to react to these changes because such a reaction is, in fact, registered by the platform driving the reaction.  Is this a problem?

From http://www.tnooz.com/2011/12/12/news/google-quietly-introduces-social-travel-service-schemer/

What makes you want to go to a place to begin with? When you have chosen a place – what makes you want to explore further? The inspiration phase of leisure trip planning research has been by far the hardest for tech-based services to master.

Google has announced (and started sending out Beta invites to) a new service, known as Schemer, which attempts to compete in this gap. Effectively it is local destination ideas based on tips from your (Google+) friends, celebrities (oh yes!) and professional destination content producers (ie. travel writers).

If destination research moves to starting at Google Schemer rather than Google Search, then Google will be able to pitch flights, hotels and other travel services, without having to necessarily work within the confines of their existing web properties.

Everyone else who makes it their business to build P2P platforms such as tour guides and recommendation platforms will be cut out of the loop.  If Google can now branch away from their core search and into the social connectivity business, they can compete with their own customers.  Is this a problem?

What Google does not do, and cannot do, is actually operate a jet aircraft.  They cannot clean a hotel room or manufacture a rental car.  They cannot cook a holiday dinner or wax a snowboard. Real people need to do this.  Why is Google chasing Travel?  Google is chasing people. At the end of the day, people drive Google. Is that a problem?

Ref: http://www.tnooz.com/2011/09/01/news/ultimate-guide-and-analysis-to-tour-guide-marketplaces-on-the-web/