Archive for the ‘data’ Category:
Social Flights; A Platform For Reality
Back in the railroad days, a platform referred to the surface upon which passengers stepped in order to enter or exit the train.
In 2012, the word “platform” often refers to one of the big four data stations on the Internet; Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Apple. On the backend, those platforms sort products and people into similar categories. On the front end, they deliver products to the consumer or the consumer to the product. Everything is done electronically, in most cases, even the product is electronic.
Of Flesh and Mortar
In real life, the Commercial Aviation Hub and Spoke System is a platform too. People and airplanes are sorted into categories, then they are matched to the size of the container. The difference is that very little is electronic – real living people and hundreds of thousands of pounds of aircraft still need to perform their little platform dance consuming vast infrastructure, ground space, time, and energy.
A Platform for Reality
Compared to the Big Four who collect data behind secure walls, analyze it with proprietary algorithms, then serve up the content that is most beneficial to the platform (not necessarily the user), Social Flights is revolutionary.
Social Flights collects four separate streams of data, converts the data to a single usable form, then shares the data back to the separate streams. For example; an airplane operator submits data regarding the inventory of their aircraft. The hospitality industry submits data relative to their inventory of support services, Travelers submit data regarding their likely destinations, and event organizers submit data regarding their event.
Music is a mixture of rhythm, sound frequency, and timbre
Social Flights captures all of these streams, organizes the data and feeds it back to the market in a more usable form. Aircraft operators know the optimum use of their aircraft resources. Hospitality knows how to best allocate their inventory. Event planners have greater exposure to their markets for attendees. Finally, Travelers know the exact door-to-door cost AND TIME to achieve their objectives.
Social Value is “manufactured” because it is in the best interest of each party that the other three are successful
Advertising extorts passion
Today, nearly all social organization is now funded – and influenced – by advertising. Social priorities are driven by Wall Street priorities while advertising powerplays tout some products often at the expense of others that would create otherwise social cohesion. People do not wake up in the morning aspiring to follow the Kardashians, they aspire to follow their friends and to pursue their natural interests, and talents. Advertising is anti-social.
The Social Flights platform is revolutionary
Social Flights, while currently emerging as a simplified air transportation system, is a real and valid social value manufacturing engine. The same system can also be used for any shared experience; cars, planes, roads, infrastructure, corporations, education, and even government with the New Value data platform that we are developing.
The problem can never be the solution.
Today, we do not have a financial problem as much as we have a value problem. The challenges that face the world today are far too great to be solved with an “Advertising” platform. Whatever happens next, it must start with a platform for Reality.
Social Flights Offers Marketing Services to Operators
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.
Information Powers Social Flight
From classical economic theory, when the buyer has the same information as the seller, markets are more efficient. Then, the online travel agent (OTA) arrived to aggregate all the airline information so customers could get a “the best deal”. But that is not really what happened, customers got lost.
Information Hazard
The OTA industry quickly ignited a race to the bottom on airfare prices with little regard for a “service model”. This led to the unbundling of services (responsible for endless hidden fees on everything from extra baggage to a printed boarding pass), consolidation in the industry, and even bankruptcy of some airlines.
I fought the law and the law won…
Now, endless law suits are being filed over who “owns the customer” as defined by some arbitrary “click” or “like” or “shopping basket”. Other lawsuits challenge the ownership of the information attached to a customer, before and after the flight, etc. You get the idea; this has nothing to do with helping the customer, nothing to do with flying airplanes, and most certainly does not make the market more efficient.
Something different in happening
In fact, the air travel market is more segmented, protected, siloed and regulated than ever – AND, prices are in the tank. Private operators obviously do not want to be a part of this market, however large, simply because they will be drawn into a viscous circle forced to do more of the things that they don’t want to do for less money. Most operators are not looking forward to it.
The Free and The Easy
On the other hand, the Internet has made information free and easy to transport – in formation is the source of knowledge and innovation in any market. There must be a strategy in that can be put in play so private operators can benefit from technology without becoming a slave to technology.
If we told the truth to ourselves…
There is little reason why the private carriers need to compete with each other – the real competition is the dysfunctional mainstream air travel market. There is little competitive advantage to not sharing empty seats and empty legs among each other when we can pull the lucrative premium class away from the commercial airlines.
No Downside to Cooperation
There is no downside to increasing the size, scope, and applicability of the private air service sector. There is little downside to the traditional customers of private services when the airplanes are better utilized, operators are well staffed, and airplane owners are receiving sufficient cash flows and buying more aircraft. There is no downside to steady cashflow.
The Social Flights Platform
Social Flights is building a platform that allows operators to collect their inventory and appear as a single resource to the private travel market. The private air service market should redefine and dominate the “service model” so that the lucrative premium class commercial market can use Private travel as the referenced standard.
And technology is just beginning
Many new technologies are beginning to impact the travel market in many profound ways. The private air services providers have an opportunity to work together and leap frog the commercial airlines to dominate the conversation related to the true value of air travel.
Information Powers Social Flight
From classical economic theory, when the buyer has the same information as the seller, markets are supposed to become more efficient. Then, the online travel agent (OTA) arrived to aggregate all the airline information so customers could get a “the best deal” with all the information presented to them. But that is not really what happened. Instead, customers got lost.
Information Hazard
The OTA industry quickly ignited a race to the bottom on airfare prices with little regard for a “service model”. This led to the unbundling of services (responsible for endless hidden fees on everything from extra baggage to a printed boarding pass), consolidation in the industry, and even bankruptcy of some airlines.
I fought the law and the law won…
Now, endless law suits are being filed over who “owns the customer” as defined by some arbitrary “click” or “like” or “shopping basket”. Other lawsuits challenge the ownership of the information attached to a customer, before and after the flight, etc. You get the idea; this has nothing to do with helping the customer, nothing to do with flying airplanes, and most certainly does not make the market more efficient.
Something different in happening
In fact, the air travel market is more segmented, protected, siloed and regulated than ever – AND, prices are in the tank. Private operators obviously do not want to be a part of this market, however large, simply because they will be drawn into a viscous circle forced to do more of the things that they don’t want to do for less money. Most operators are not looking forward to it.
The Free and The Easy
On the other hand, the Internet has made information free and easy to transport – in formation is the source of knowledge and innovation in any market. There must be a strategy in that can be put in play so private operators can benefit from technology without becoming a slave to technology.
If we told the truth to ourselves…
There is little reason why the private carriers need to compete with each other – the real competition is the dysfunctional mainstream air travel market. There is little competitive advantage to not sharing empty seats and empty legs among each other when we can pull the lucrative premium class away from the commercial airlines.
No Downside to Cooperation
There is no downside to increasing the size, scope, and applicability of the private air service sector. There is little downside to the traditional customers of private services when the airplanes are better utilized, operators are well staffed, and airplane owners are receiving sufficient cash flows and buying more aircraft. There is no downside to steady cashflow.
The Social Flights Platform
Social Flights is building a platform that allows operators to collect their inventory and appear as a single resource to the private travel market. The private air service market should redefine and dominate the “service model” so that the lucrative premium class commercial market can use Private travel as the referenced standard.
And technology is just beginning
Many new technologies are beginning to impact the travel market in many profound ways. The private air services providers have an opportunity to work together and leap frog the commercial airlines to dominate the conversation related to the true value of air travel.
Challenges Of Technology For Private Aviation
Social Flights will soon release Part 2 of the Operators Whitepaper. Part 1 identified the intrinsic value of private aviation to a travel market. Part 2 will identify some of the technology challenges of integrating with the mainstream travel community.
In short, the next step for private aviation is to integrate with the mainstream market while offering seamless transition with other technologies and transportation modes. The following is a summary of Part 2.
The Technology Challenge
Technology is encroaching on every aspect of the travel industry from on-line travel agencies to Next Generation Air Traffic Management. It is no longer sufficient to have a great looking website, the data that private operators collects and distributes must be compatible with all other services that support the customer long before and long after they cross your threshold.
Compatibility of Pricing
One example is in compatibility of pricing; private airplanes are priced by the flight-hours imposed on a private aircraft. However, commercial airplanes are priced by the market availability of seats. There is no way for the customer to compare these two travel options; as such, these markets are segmented by price incompatibility. The trend is increasing through the unbundling of services like baggage fees and check in fees and convenience fees, hotel, and car rentals contracts, discount coupons, etc.
True Value / Time Value
A vastly neglected aspect of travel is called True Value. For example; the cost of traveling to a hub airport often exceeds the cost of the airline ticket. The time waiting for TSA screening and connecting flights often exceeds the in-route flight time. The total transit time often exceeds the time that the traveler needs to be at the location. Weekend travel is impossible without extra hotel stays and missing one or two days of work. Time is money. Lost opportunity is money. Life is short.
Alternate Technologies
Alternate technologies such as mobile connectivity and social media drive different migration patters of people, business and entertainment. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Google offer alternate ways for people to communicate in lieu of travel, but they also expose more people to more places that are less accessible by commercial aviation.
The Integration
Today, the travel market is segmented in information silos where companies hoard information in the name of competitive advantage. However, when prices are comparable, the market can apply a time/value formula where alternate technologies enhance the value of travel. Then, and only then can the entire door-to-door travel experience can be fully integrated in an efficient market where everyone playing the travel game shares information, combines services, and collaborate in the best interest of the customer.
It’s a game, let’s have fun
Another Way to View Empty Legs
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.
Is Air Transport Pricing Deliberately Confusing?
Until we can price all air transportation correctly, we will not be able to price any air transportation correctly.
Social Flights is the premier air transportation company that sells private jet service on a per seat basis. This is important because there is no other way to compare the time-value of a private jet against the time-value of a commercial jet unless they are priced in the same manner.
Unfortunately, highly competitive markets determine the price of a seat on a commercial airline, not necessarily distance of the flight. This does not make very much sense – for nearly any other product, you pay for how much you consume. If only commercial airlines were priced like private aircraft: by the mile.
Why does an airline ticket need to be 400 dollars 6 weeks prior to departure and 600 dollars 2 weeks prior to departure, except to maximize profit? Nothing else changes except as a proportion to distance traveled. But think of all the accountants, marketing personnel, and strategic planners constantly manipulating price inputs that have nothing to do with passenger satisfaction.
Every airline use essentially the same types of aircraft, they pay the same cost in fuel, and they have similar direct costs in labor, landing fees and gate contracts. You would think that a 3000-mile trip would cost X amount more than a 1500-mile trip… all day long, for each and every airline.
- Calculation of fuel burn per 200 lb payload
This chart shows the actual fuel cost to carry a 200 lb payload 1750 miles between DFW and LAX for various types of commercial aircraft assuming jet fuel price is about 3 dollars per gallon (at the time that this industry study was published).
I did some back o’ the napkin calculations and concluded that a Lear 35 burns 5 times more fuel per 200 lb passenger than an MD-80. A Phenom 300 is about half of that, or 2.5 times that of the MD-80. The average would be around 3.3 times the commercial jet.
The Golden Ratio
This is a terribly difficult calculation to make so bear with my assumptions here. But suppose all things being equal, we can say generally that a private aircraft cost is 3 -5 times greater than the commercial airplane while the door-to-door time is 1/3 – 1/5 the time of the commercial flight. The factor of 3 – 5 (depending on the comparable averages) puts the cost of the traveler time in parity with the cost of the airline time.
Why does this matter?
Now, some honest comparative market analysis can take place by simply adding and subtracting time and money from both parts of the Golden Ratio to account for various attributes of the trip. For example: shorter drive to smaller airports, no long lines, non-stop flights can be added or subtracted from the “time” part of the ratio. Meanwhile; the cost of parking, airport taxes, cost of food, cost of lodging, and the cost of traveling to your final destination, etc., can be added or subtracted from the cost side of the ratio.
The Data will set us free
To liberate this information is to empower the traveler, the operators, the community and the hospitality industry to make rational decisions. Communities can design rational incentives for tourism. Corporations can make rational decisions for employee travel, and economic planners can make rational investments in intermodal transportation.
Technologies to Revolutionize Everything
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
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.
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 Data Will Set You Free
25% of Airline Delays Due to Volume
Have you wondered recently why air travel seems to have gotten worse but you can’t exactly understand why? Are more people traveling? Is the economy going gangbusters? Is Social Media bringing the world together?
A quick stroll through the transportation department bureau of statistics is truly revealing. The airline industry is methodologically reducing capacity AND increasing profits. This does not make sense – how can any product sell less and make more?
The number of domestic flights has reduced from just over 10 million in 2005 to only 7 million in 2011. This is the same number of flights as 2000
- Domestic Airline Profits
Revenue passenger miles have fallen from 570,854,623 to 473,968,295 over the same time period. That is roughly 100,000,000 less seat miles flown.
That makes sense because available capacity has dropped – seat miles have diminished from 739,841,385 to 571,129,091
Meanwhile load factors (passenger-miles as a proportion of available seat-miles) have jumped from 77% to 83%. Yup, that means that airplanes are a lot more crowded.
- Revenue from Cancellation / Change Fees
So then it should not be surprising that 25% of all delays are from overloading as airlines pull away from smaller airports and work the hubs harder.
Well, we know that aviation is a difficult business and that the industry racked up major losses but things are better now right? The industry profits are well over 5 billion dollars.
But where is this money coming from? Well, first the reservation change/cancellation fees collected are 2.3 billion dollars in 2010 – this is the money that we pay the airlines for delivering ZERO service, seriously. The baggage fees collected are also over 3 billion dollars. So there are $5B in fees and $5B profit…do the math.
Does anyone see what’s happening? Can anyone see what direction these trends are headed in? Does anyone see the alternative? We do – the future opportunity is to build an alternate system of non-stop service using public charter certification on private jets. If you are a traveler, set yourself free. If you are an investor, Social Flights is a magnificent opportunity getting better every day…