Plane Conversations

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.

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.

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.

The most important series of equestrian events is right around the corner and Social Flights is busy filling seats on private aircraft from several locations in the US.

Private Jet traffic can get pretty busy and prices are at a premium.  Commercial airlines cannot get you in and out in the same day and booking a hotel can be a nightmare.

When you share a private jet into this event with people who you know from the same town, you enjoy a first class experience with people with whom you can share a lifelong memory.  Let Social Flights be your source of air transportation service for The Preakness Stakes.

via Preakness Stakes – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Preakness Stakes is an American flat Thoroughbred horse race for three-year-olds held on the third Saturday in May each year at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. It is a Grade I race run over a distance of 9.5 furlongs on dirt. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57 kg); fillies 121 lb (55 kg). It is the second leg of the US Triple Crown, with the Kentucky Derby preceding it and the Belmont Stakes following it. The horse must win all three races to win the Triple Crown.

The Preakness Stakes has been termed “The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans” because a blanket of Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta, the state flower of Maryland) is traditionally placed around the winner’s neck. The attendance at the Preakness Stakes ranks second in North America and usually surpasses the attendance of all other stakes races including the Belmont Stakes, the Breeders’ Cup and the Kentucky Oaks. The attendance of the Preakness Stakes typically only trails the Kentucky Derby, for more information see American Thoroughbred Racing top Attended Events.

Visit social flights to get an instant quote under “Create a Flight” option.  Then we’ll notify you as others join your itinerary.  The best time to start is now.  Invite your family, friends, and colleagues for an exceptional experience at an most exceptional event.

High Speed transportation has great value for a community and an economy.  If a company like Boeing or Airbus were credited for the amount of time their products restored to the global economy (over the prior fastest transportation technology), their value would be counted in the trillions of dollars in increased productivity.

Introspect marketing

Perhaps this is the way the private aviation community needs to market itself.  Flying private saves time and time has value.  So, just because empty seats are difficult to sell, it does not mean that they don’t have value.

Follow the productivity

The trick is to market the “productivity” of the person sitting in the seat.  This is easy for Corporate Executives to understand, but what about a team of doctors going to a conference?  A single doctor would not charter a full jet, but 7 or 8 may very well afford to fly together.  Same day travel in the medical field is certainly worth the higher cost of a private aircraft, but how would you find 8 doctors who want to fly together?

Hey, Let’s Advertise

Advertising in a Medical Journal averages $45.00 – $88.00 per 1000 impressions of doctors starting at about $10,000 – or you could offer your free empty leg schedule to hospitals in every city where you fly. Guess how fast the word would spread?

Marketing is expensive: (From WebpageFx blog)

• The average price that advertisers pay to access people in the Travel market is $20.00 per 1000 impressions
• The minimum cost for producing and running a National TV advertisement is $100,000 minimum and several million maximum.
• National Magazine Ad cost between $5000-$50,000 for a full page
• Direct Mailing costs $1500- $15000 plus $1.00 – $2.20 per addressee
• Search engine optimization costs $2,500 – $10,000 website development plus content creation and ongoing maintenance of $2,500 – $5,000 per month
• Pay-per-click marketing costs $4000 – $10,000 set up fee plus $.20 – $3.00 per click through.
• National Email Campaign $4,000 – $10,000 to set up plus $500 per month labor, plus content creation for newsletter, and additional to buy email databases other than your own.

Worse yet, most marketing books say that it takes  seven (7) impressions to gain a customer – and that number may be increasing with ad saturation in social media!!!

Solution:

Social Flights collects marketing data, operations data, event data, community data and hospitality data and formats it in a way that allows true cost to be extracted and compared with seat value.  Then we can look into the community to find influential persons who would feature your company in exchange for the seat. We’ll find doctors, executives, bloggers, media, or VIPs who can deliver a targeted marketing message for far less than the cost of hiring marketing staff.

You cannot receive any value for empty legs unless they are listed and available to our network of entrepreneurs, operators, corporations, and media allies.  Social Flights listens to the community to find the NEED, then serve the need wherever appropriate in order to access the free publicity and amplification with which the aviation industry is endowed. Social Flights is the platform for such business development systems.

Yesterday’s blog post argued that we cannot price any air transportation correctly until we price all air transportation correctly.

This means that if a trip were priced in proportion to it’s distance, then competition between airlines would amount to battles for internal efficiency rather than price wars dependent on short haul passengers subsidizing long haul passengers – plus “gotcha” fees, and unbundled services, increased government regulation, etc.

This would also allow smaller aircraft to be priced correctly in a time/value model…

The long-term view of wrong pricing

Livability is defined in terms of employment, safety, crime education and transportation. City planners, communities, and transportation officials allocate money towards projects, services and amenities that balance these objectives.  They also must react to the influence of external forces. The airlines have a disproportionate power to impact an entire economy by manipulating prices and services.

Losing the proximity war

Without proportional pricing, planners do not have a built-in proximity bias that can support multi-mode projects such as rail, bus, and ferry services.  If the price is the same to fly 500 miles as 3000 miles, a form of tunnel vision in regional economic development may appear.

Only 6 airports have direct rail service

Negative incentives

The hub and spoke system also introduces negative incentives to regionalization.  The time that it takes to travel between non-hub locations 500 miles apart often exceeds the time it takes to fly to a distant hub 3000 miles away.

Yet, families and friends want to disperse in much shorter distances.  Small companies want to branch out in smaller segments.  A regional tourism industry is easier to support than attracting distant tourists. Innovation clusters need space to diversify.  The flawed airline pricing model combined with profit driven hub and spoke economics may actually thwart natural growth in favor of unsustainable growth.  It makes little economic sense to disaggregate people from the land that they occupy.

Social Flights is much more than a ride-sharing system for jets.  Social Flights is a social organization concept that allows air transportation to serve the needs of communities as people reorganize themselves in the Digital Age.   Social Flights allows for rapid and effective air service to be deployed to the natural foundations of economic growth instead of trying to force growth to occur wherever the airlines choose to fly.

Smaller aircraft can fly efficiently between smaller markets as long as the price can be compared to the same time/value criteria  as larger jets. People have extraordinary access to information from which to make superior decisions. However, when the wrong pricing model distorts the right decisions, only the best-worst decision is available.  This is inefficient – it’s time to take off the blinders.

Air Travel in and out of New York City Area is among the most complex in the world.  4100 flights per day squeak out of 3 major airports while all three rank near the bottom of 29 hubs for on-time performance.  Many people say that the Next Generation satellite air traffic control will alleviate the problem by allowing aircraft to fly closer together in crowded areas.  Others say that multiple modes of transportation such as high-speed rail would ease congestion.

Social Flights says, “Why fly someplace that you are not going?”

I grew up in Connecticut and have come to know New York as a magnificent city with huge importance in business, government, art, and culture. The cost of traveling into New York can often exceed the price of airfare outbound and almost always takes longer than the flight itself.  Commuting into the city from Connecticut can cost 100 dollars including parking, commuter train, and meals – and it can take 3 hours each way.  Commuters often spend more time traveling than working.  The cost of living in the city is exorbitant.

Look at the numbers

At around 200-250 persons per aircraft, 4100 flights represents between 750,000 and 1 million people per day.  The population of Manhattan is only 1.5 Million.  A significant percentage of people are actually traveling to, or from, Connecticut, or New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, and beyond.

In fact, there are 23 airports in the New York Metropolitan Area that can accept turbine aircraft.  At market capacity for each of these airports, the Social Flights Community Air Services Program could relieve the majors by 25-30% of their traffic while opening up air transportation to the millions of people who live outside of major cities and would otherwise not travel.

• Central Jersey Regional Airport (JVI)
• Essex County Airport (CDW)
• Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1)
• Hackettstown Airport (N05)
• Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Airport (BDR)
• Lincoln Park Airport (N07)
• Linden Airport (LDJ)
• Little Ferry Seaplane Base (2N7)
• Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP)
• Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU)
• Newton Airport (New Jersey) (3N5)
• Old Bridge Airport (3N6)
• Princeton Airport (39N)
• Republic Airport (FRG)
• Solberg-Hunterdon Airport (N51)
• Somerset Airport (SMQ)
• Stewart International Airport (SWF)
• Teterboro Airport (TEB)
• Trenton-Mercer Airport (TTN)
• Trenton-Robbinsville Airport (N87)
• Tweed New Haven Regional Airport (HVN)
• Twin Pine Airport (N75)
• Westchester County Airport (HPN)

Now, Let’s reintroduce those great ideas

Next Generation satellite air traffic control will alleviate the problem by allowing aircraft to fly closer together in crowded areas, but it also brings improved ATC to smaller airports at relatively low cost.  Multimode transportation like high-speed trains has a distinct advantage of being able to stop along a route.  For example; high-speed rail from Washington DC to Boston could carry passengers between airports not unlike trams carry passengers between terminals.  New mobile and big data applications can sort people and planes as effectively as hub infrastructure.

Social Flight knows where you are coming from

If you live in Connecticut, New Jersey, or upstate New York, you should be able to fly from your local airport to anywhere in the country. The Social Flights Community Air Service Program brings public charter air service to your doorstep and the doorstep that you are traveling to.

Things are moving very fast in the era of social media. As soon as an airline makes a move, everyone downstream needs to adjust. New applications are built a new competitors form responses.  There is no “book” to read about how to do business in this rapidly changing environment.  So when a customer has a new question for a new situation, they go directly to the Internet to find the answer. And what do they find? Enter the online travel agent (OTA).

From Travel Matter:  Why Blogging Makes Sense for Travel Agents:

Then sites like TripAdvisor entered the industry, allowing travelers to access (and create) user generated reviews of hotels and booking travel became even more of a DIY process, that didn’t require expert guidance. Other sites even let travelers find out which seat on an airplane has the most leg room or which wing of a hotel has better views. Even guidebooks began to show this DIY attitude, as Lonely Planet outsold other publishers.

DYI-mania

As more and more layers of DYI independence are offered up to customer, so too is disinformation, incomplete information, conditional information and thousands of “options” that mask the true value of the travel experience.  It is largely in the best interest of OTA to consume the “time” of the traveler seduced by the promise of low prices.  First, this allows OTAs to impress more ads; and second, the DYI’er eventually get frustrated and click through to the more expensive (profitable) option for lack of time to deep dive through the details, restrictions, and caveats.

The Indispensable Knowledge Resource

All along, the traditional travel agent; once an indispensable resource has fallen by the wayside.  Some argue that the travel agent is to blame for not reinventing their profession from “broker” to “helper”.  Perhaps being technology savvy never entered the profession as it had for so many other professions.  Increasingly, the travel agent skill set is needed.

The Experience Traveler

Travel Agents have the ability to organize people around a set of events, opportunities, locations, and modes of transportation.  The experience of travel is finding it’s way into the value proposition of the decisions that the travelers make.

Everything from social media to Google to Groupon has re-focused consumers’ attention on small businesses, and given local businesses the tools they need to compete in non-local markets.

Few can aggregate local information better than travel agents

If given the right assets, they can put together offerings in anticipation of travelers.  Social Flights is constantly looking for that perfect skill set of location knowledge, transportation knowledge, and concierge service to whom we can entrust an available aircraft asset.

Travel agents can help redefine the door-to-door value proposition and Social Flights is here to help with a full array of private jets and corporate jets for private and public charter for scheduled service between any city pair that one can envision.  We are not the only ones; hotels, experience tourism, conference and events all search for the elusive traveler who has so many options but so little time. Travel agents can now manage a scarce and protected inventory once again where their knowledge, creativity, and social skill matter.

In Japan and Europe, high speed rail often competes with air travel for short distance routes.  While it may take 3-4 hours door-to-door to travel 300 miles in an aircraft, the high-speed train can cover the same door-to-door distance in more comfort, the same time, and for less money.  An automobile may need 6 hours to complete the same journey at a similar cost of ownership.

What many peoples fail to realize is the possibility that a community can operate their own airline. This alternative is being pioneered by Social Flights. The regionalization of air service is a new concept that allows communities to own and operate one or more aircraft maintaining control over the schedules and locations where the aircraft flies.

In the United States, a rift continues to grow between available air service and reasonable alternatives to air service. This creates a substantial burden on families; but it also creates a compound burden on the economy upon which those families depend for their livelihood.  If corporate travel is constrained, the economy as a whole is constrained.

From this article in the NY Times:

Consider the new realities of air travel. Competition is decreasing, fares are rising and airlines are adjusting routes (and charging extra fees) in ruthless calculations to extract the greatest possible revenue per mile flown.