Plane Conversations

Social Flights is preparing for release an important document which spells out the relationship that Social Flights seeks to create with private jet operators across the United States.

The document is a written specifically to operators of private aircraft fleets.  Our objective is to demonstrate how Social Flights can increase their fleet utilization, aircraft yields, and overall business success.

The first part of this paper begins with a discussion about empty legs and finishes with a discussion of all the ways that empty seats on empty legs can be converted to cash flow.

The second part of this document discusses the challenges of technology in aviation.  While airlines use big data to maximize their profits, the on-line travel agencies use big data to minimize airline profits.  The resulting game of cat and mouse creates pricing silos that distort markets.

Social Flights can convert your seats to cash flow one way or another, but cash flow nonetheless.  Social Flights restores consistency among the pricing silos so that travelers can compare true door-to-door value of a private flight vs. a commercial flight.  Social flights creates true transparency to increase the efficiency of the market.

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Travel is the most expensive advertising vertical in the world.  Airplanes act as market amplifiers for products, services, and events.  A great deal of marketing value can sit in those empty seats and there is no way for operators to convert that value to cash.  Social media is an amazing marketing tool that can amplify a message across a broad landscape where content is king and reputation is currency.

NextGen air traffic management will increase the number of airplanes that can occupy the airspace, but it does little for ground traffic or traveler comfort – yet this same technology will open smaller airports and private routes to private operators.  Social Flights will act like “code sharing” agreements that the airlines have adopted for years.

Finally; the door-to-door value of the Social Flights experience must include integration with ground transportation, hospitality, events, tourism boards, corporations, communities, and ultimately, economic development policy.  This is where the commercial airlines utterly fail in their profit calculations.

Social Flights air services will provide a platform of shared legs, shared inventory, and coordinate consistent route structures from a pool of operators and aircraft using the same yield management and fleet management principles of a large commercial airline. Social Flights brings these stakeholders to the table, converts their data to a shared value format, and provides a seamless  travel experience that is always unique, always fast, always luxurious, and always safe.

In return, we ask that operators provide Social Flights with data feed to their inventory.  This may require an operator to add a business process to their day-to-day activity, but it is our intention to be able to deliver far more value than what the operator invests.  In short, you will be able to calculate the ROI on your association with Social Flights.

Let’s fly together!

All of us at Social Flights extend our deepest holiday wishes to all the people who have supported us during this our Launch year.  A lot has happened since February 2011.  We thought we should report to you what has been accomplished and some new developments underway:

Over 13,000 people have joined Social Flights Traveler’s Network receiving unlimited access to the following services:    

• Over 90 Private Charter Operators have joined the Social Flights platform.
• Over 500 aircraft are available in the Social Flights Virtual Fleet.
• Social Flights website can now deliver an instant auto quote under our “Create a Flight” option.
• Social Flights Allows you to embed our quoting feature in your website
• Social Flights Developed a full suite of Community Airline services for small cities that are losing – or never had – airline service.
• Social Flights allows members to create alerts to desired locations or invitations to join a flight formation.
• Social Flights assures privacy with our internal networking features which are never released to the public domain.

Beginning next year:

• Social Flights will expand scheduled public jet charter service through the community airline program to smaller markets and even “stranded” communities.
• Social Flights will expand one-way flight program from 100 per day to over 1000 per day
• Social Flights is building out the affinity travel and social jet charter service to include colleges, Sports, concerts, conventions, events, tourism, and family travel.
• Our Elite Travel Services division will initiate international social jet charter service between the US and China as well as Latin America.

To our Partners:

Our partner network is growing to include hotels, Concierge services, tour operators, marketing firms, Facebook page owners, event managers, and economic development agencies.

Our partner network will continue to grow to serve the traffic that we now steadily deliver hassle-free to your communities.

These are the highlights off the accomplishments this year and some insider information on what to expect next year. 

If you are a traveler please invite your friends and colleagues to share a jet.  If you are a community or event organizer, please keep in mind that we are here to serve you and your community travel needs.  If you are a certified aircraft operator, let us help you increase utilization of your inventory.  If you are a hospitality or experience service provider, please let us help you build travel packages around the freedom of flight.

Few people get on a commercial airplane to enjoy the fine food, friendly conversation and sensational view – but that may change as KLM continues to innovate in social media.  Some may remember that KLM was the first to provide on-demand service from Europe to Miami booked entirely through social media.

This time, KLM is banking on the fact that people who have both an origin city and a destination city in common, would have other things in common as well. KLM observes that people share information with each other so freely on social media- so maybe they’ll share information with each other on “Social Airlines”.

Will something get lost in the translation between the virtual and the reality? Fortunately, Anne van den Berg was kind enough to provide Social Flights with a translation of her Dutch language blog,  Editor Anne Daily:

You always have to wait and see who will sit next to you on an airplane. A crying kid or a smelly man, it is not always fun. Soon, this can be in the past. The Dutch airline company KLM will be offering seating suggestions based on someone’s Twitter or Facebook account. The goal, says an executive from KLM, is letting, mainly business, passengers network. I am very curious how this will work. 

Well, we are asking the same questions at Social Flights.  In fact we are attempting to fill small aircraft on direct flights based on a similar assumption that people of like interests would choose to share an airplane together.  While the KLM starts with a full plane and sorts people by interests, Social Flights hopes to go one step further and use such data to “kickstart” scheduled “flash Charter Jet” service.  So while KLM sees an important branding advantage, Social Flights sees and entirely new paradigm for air transportation – public Charter Jets.

Anne van den Berg continues with the following analysis:

- What kind of customers are you serving? I wonder, what customer are waiting for this service? Personally, I like having some conversations with my neighbour in an airplane, but, mainly when I return from a trip, I want to sleep. Nó contact. If someone will come and sit next to me with the expectation of discussing the state of the world in a highly intellectual manner, it is very probable he will be deceived. 

- And what about privacy? I expect that customers will have to do an opt-in, but do you want to give everybody insight in who you are? If you put your Twitter information out there, sure that is public already, but Facebook? That is mainly meant for family and friends (although some people will stretch that definition). 

KLM has since disclosed in this CNN article that mutual acceptance to use the social seating tool will be required. KLM was quick to note that the intention is not to create a dating game and they did not disclose if they would charge an extra fee for the service. Further, they they did mention adding any amenities in support of the friendship event.

This leaves me wondering what the implications of being “unfriended” in virtual space and reality space at the edge of physical space.  In any case, Social Flights will be watching KLM developments actively. Thanks Anne for the tip and translation on this story – let’s share a flight sometime.