Plane Conversations

Social Flights is proud to announce one of the most important innovations in travel since the OTA.  Our new events page allows communities to promote their events and their special attributes for free to people across the country who may want to share a charter aircraft to get there.  Our “kickstarter” feature books the trip when the seats are filled – at which point we will deliver them comfortably to your doorstep.

We call this Social Flying.

Normally, the airline decides when, where, and how you will reach your destination.   With Social Flights, communities of people tell the airline where, when, and how they want to reach your destination.  Of course, many people want to attend your event or experience the natural beauty, culture, or history of your community  - the problem is that they simply cannot get there.  That’s the problem that Social Flights solves best.

Social Flights opens up a new market for air travel

For example:

• Many events require a 3 day minimum commitment; 2 days to travel commercial and 1+ days for the event.
• Weekend travel is almost impossible with the airline system. End of story.
• Spontaneity: airline seats often book solid weeks in advance or priced through the roof within the week of travel.
• Access: many of the greatest events, most amazing sites, and unforgettable experiences are NOT near a hub airport

The following screen shot is an example of how communities are using Social Flights Event service.  Go ahead and try it, contact us here or call 615 534-4590 to participate in the beta rollout of this new and exciting feature 

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?

For example:

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

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.

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…

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.

Airlines are taking a beating from on-line conversations.

In yesterday’s article titled “Four Strategic Social Experiences” we illustrated, using a word cloud, what a consumer might find if they were searching for shared experiences about a particular airline. Not good.

A new report from PhoCusWright finds that “Flyers are essentially giving airlines a grade of C+, which is barely above satisfactory,” said Carroll Rheem, director of research for PhoCusWright. “But even more concerning for airlines is that their most valuable customers — business travelers and those with higher annual household incomes — are even less happy than the average.” Airlines are stuck in a spiral to the bottom.  They all compete on price and subsequently as margins get squeezed so does service.

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Good ideas travel easily and far along trade routes.  Ideas like irrigation, Apples, grapes and wine spread along the Silk Road. The paper and writing spread new ideas leading to increased literacy, the scrapping of old philosophy and the creation of new social orders. The printing press then led the way for today’s mighty publishing Industry.  But don’t forget a simple fact, travel is the substrate of the next economic paradigm.

Ideas: A Chain with many Weak Links

Seth Godin wrote a wonderful article about the publishing industry called The Domino Effect.  He observes that:

1. The middlemen (bookstores) have too much power to limit shelf space.

2.Authors are separated from their readers and don’t have the data to contact them directly.

3. Pricing is based static, slow, and largely irrelevant of content or any form of supply and demand which is of little benefit to the reader or the author.

4. Ideas from books travel much farther and faster than the book itself which does not translate into book sales.

Mr. Godin’s point is that given how important books are, the Chain has many weak links between the author and the audience. Publishing is due for an extraordinary disruption and Seth is going to change it with The Domino Project.  But how many other industries suffer from the same weak-chain syndrome?

Travel: A Plane with many Weak Links

Well, if Books and Travel spreads ideas along the Silk Road, then they must have a lot of other things in common.  If we apply Seth’s observations to the commercial airlines:

1. We see that Airports and airlines have tremendous power to limit gates, times, and availability of routes.

2.  Airlines have no idea why they are carrying all those people around.

3. Pricing is static, segmented, slow, and has very little to do with the actual supply and demand for travel.

4. Travelers are transporting ideas which move faster and more broadly than the aircraft itself and which does not translate into more airline tickets sold.

Where ideas spread; value is created

What is so powerful about ideas?  Most innovation gurus discount raw “ideas” as the useless drivel of idle minds. “Show me the money, not the ideas”, they bark.  If ideas are not innovation, then what are they?  If Ideas are not valuable, then what are they?

The Travel Economy

Travel technologies and applications are being sold for incredible sums of money.  Every airline merger is big news and every geolocation application is huge business.  Travel data is a lightening rod for everything from pricing to privacy.  Social Media applications are getting that migration routes are an excellent marker for “value flow” and therefore, cash flow.  Airline Travel is still the most favored mode political disruption because the links in the economic chain are so weak.  Travel is serious business.

The “New Value” Integration:

Every industry with weak links between production and end use are candidates for disruption in the great integration. Any idea that can strengthen the link in the chain between origin and the destination of an idea is a product of the great integration.  The Social Value creation process and astonishing opportunity will happen at the weak links between origin and destination of any product or service.

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When you and I visited last, Leon and I were at Wal-Mart buying emergency clothes and supplies since our bags were lost. I honestly thought (hoped) that would be the end of the trip drama.

Later that day, our bags showed up on the doorstep where we were staying; so, we finally had our stuff.

Tuesday night’s business dinner went late; and, we had a Wednesday morning meeting before we would leave Danbury to drive to White Plains (HPN) to catch our 11:30 departure for home.  That was the plan, anyway.

Wednesday morning there was a voice message on Leon’s cell phone notifying us the 11:30 am flight out of HPN had been canceled and that we had been rebooked on a 6:05am flight. The message was sent sometime Tuesday night while we were at dinner; but. we did not get the message. He received a text message at 6:10am saying that we were booked on the 6:05am flight (you know, the one that left five minutes ago?). For us to have made that flight, we would have had to have left Danbury about 4:15 am Wednesday morning, missing our Wednesday morning meeting completely.

After calling the help desk at Delta, we were able to get a flight out of La Guardia at 3:30pm, going non-stop to Nashville.

This wasn’t toobad since it gave us a little more time for business at Danbury.  Great.  So, we left Danbury around noon for the hour and a half drive to New York’s La Guardia airport. When we were within sight of the terminal building, I got a computer call from Delta notifying us that our 3:30pm flight had been canceled due to weather in Nashville and that we had been rebooked on a Thursday morning flight departing at  8:10am.  You’re kidding me, right?

Trying to figure out how to reduce the costs of this change, we returned the rental car, checked into an airport hotel and the day was over.

Delta had canceled all flights Wednesday afternoon into Nashville (BNA) due to forecasted surface icing conditions. I appreciate the seriousness of freezing rain and what it does to an aircraft; but, interestingly, Southwest and other carriers continued to fly into BNA all Wednesday afternoon and evening.

I wonder if the cancellations had anything to do with the “passenger bill of rights” and the new penalties for people who are left stranded on aircraft or in terminals. Maybe not, but the cancellation of that many flights for a chance of bad weather seems like a very aggressive cancellation policy.

Our next trip to Danbury will be in a Cirrus SR-22 or on Southwest to Hartford, Connecticut’s Bradley / Windsor Locks Airport if the weather is too bad for the Cirrus. No more La Guardia. How much productivity is lost by traveling in this system? The FAA study says about $33 billion per year in lost time. I don’t know exactly how they came up with that number; but, I would dare say that they have not even scratched the surface of true losses since they have no way today to measure the wear and tear on the human mind and body from traveling through the airline system.   

Bottom line: The trip home got us back to Nashville one day late with travel time Danbury to home base at Smyrna was 22 hours. I think that got us down to about 45 mph average trip speed.  In the 1930’s, Delta Air Lines advertised “Speed, Comfort and Convenience.”  Not so much.

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It takes a day like yesterday to remind me why we are in the business of business aviation.

The day started with a 4:00 am departure from the house to make it to the Nashville Airport by 5:15 am for a 6:15 am departure.  Leon Custers and I were taking a Delta flight to White Plains, NY to meet up with business partners in Danbury, CT.

Delta had the best price / schedule to get us to White Plains by noon with a 45 minute drive to Danbury.  The main benefit of White Plains (HPN) was avoiding one of the big NYC airports such as La Guardia (LGA), which are off schedule more than they are on.

Yesterday was a big snow storm day for the Midwest, and Nashville even had an inch or two on the ground, but the roads were fine.  We made it though check in and security fine and boarded the aircraft set for an on time departure. This was an originating flight so the odds for an on time departure were good. After the aircraft was loaded, we sat for 30 minutes waiting on fuel, and then a ramp worker to push the aircraft off the gate. In our world this happens rarely, and when it does, it is a major event to not make an on time departure due to line service issues.  This was not a good sign for the day.

We arrived in to Detroit for the connecting flight and it looked like the trip was going to settle back down. We were sitting at the gate with 30 minutes to spare and an on time departure status on the board for HPN.  About 30 minutes past scheduled departure the announcement was made that the flight had been canceled. Everyone was to rebook to HPN on later flights. The computer system at DTW was down so flights that had canceled were still showing as on time departures. This made it very difficult for travelers trying to rebook flights and figure out where their new departures were.  

 Here is where the problems starts for most travelers in the airline system.

Airlines have reduced their capacity (inventory of available seats). Load factors are up, providing more pricing strength and higher revenue per flight, which is good for the airlines profit margins.

It is not so good for the traveler when flights cancel. The next flight for us was not later in the day, because the next three flights were all sold out. It was the next day.

Needing to get to our destination in the same day, like most business travelers, we resorted to looking for alternatives within the system and settled on La Guardia (LGA) which is an extra hour drive to Danbury. So, after trying to avoid LGA we ended up there anyway, only 5 hours later.

While waiting on the flight to LGA we got to witness the DTW police deal with a lady who decided to go back down the jet bridge after getting off the aircraft. She ignored the warnings of the gate agent and created a whole crisis, most likely over nothing other than she panicked trying to go back after her bag.

Another lady traveling with husband and baby had a melt down because she left a bag on her previous flight and they could not find it. I know that feeling when you have just lost your lap top with your whole life on it. I felt sorry for her. The gate agent was overwhelmed with issues and could not provide much help other than to tell her to file a claim. 

Departing DTW for LGA our flight was further delayed because the catering did not get loaded on the aircraft on time.  The arriving flight aircraft could not off load passengers because the Jet bridge was broken,  and TSA decided to pull a random gate security check.  All of those issues caused a one hour delay.

On the taxi into the LGA terminal I overheard another business traveler on his cell phone recounting his day that sounded much like ours.  He had started at 4.30am, was on his third flight segment and still had not arrived at his destination. His comment – ‘this is another one of those travel Mondays”.  Another lady in front of us missed her planned dinner.

Fortunately the weather was good at LGA, so we did finally get there, but our bags did not.  A lady in the lost bags line was very upset.  She was on the last day of military leave and her stuff was lost.

We made it to Danbury and were able to make dinner with our business associates, although late.

So this morning it was the trip to Wal-Mart, when they opened at 7.00 am, for emergency clothes and a tooth brush to survive until the bags show up.  As I write this, I feel sure that this story could be told millions of times over by the road warriors who travel in the system every week.  

As we waited to board the flight in DTW to LGA, you could look at the countenance of the men and women business travelers, and see a look of exhaustion, defeat and frustration.

The purpose of air travel is to save time. Somehow the airline system is not gaining in productivity in its mission. It is slipping.  And what about the stress of the travel?  Not knowing for sure when you are going to arrive, dealing with missed meeting times, lost bags, rerouted destinations….

Enroute time from Murfreesboro, TN to Danbury, CT: 15 Hours

Average Speed door to door: 65 miles per hour

There has to be a better way, and business aviation should keep seeking to provide the solution in ways that more travelers can afford. I can tell you that everyone of the people I rode with yesterday would take another solution if they could.  

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In a recent post I commented on the study that claims delays in the airline industry costs US travelers 33 billion dollars a year in lost productivity.

Yesterday I made a small contribution to the 33 billion of lost productivity on a flight from New York back home to Nashville.

One of my business partners and I had business in Danbury and Norwalk Connecticut over a two day period. In putting the trip itinerary together it made sense to fly into New York (LGA) on Southwest, rent a car, do the multiple meetings, and then fly home the morning of the third day.

The day started with a 7am departure from the hotel in Norwalk with about a 50 mile drive to LaGuardia. We left early to avoid the worst of traffic coming into the city. The traffic was not too bad so we got to the rental car drop off at 9am and ended up at the terminal and clearing through security by 945am.   

The flight, scheduled to depart at 1135, ended up being 30 minutes late on the inbound arrival due to weather in the NY area. The weather was just some light rain and cloud cover. Nothing major, but IFR conditions nonetheless.

After boarding, the aircraft pulled way from the gate and got in line for a 45 minute wait for departure. More delay due to IFR spacing issues for landing and departing traffic.

We had to connect in Baltimore with a plane change but missed the connection due to late arrival. There was another flight to Nashville departing 40 minutes after our arrival so we rushed over to that departure gate to find out the flight was oversold. We were then put on standby for a fully booked flight 2 hours later. Reduced capacity in the airline system translates to high load factors and profit for the airlines but major inconvenience for the passenger when connections get missed.

During this process we found out that 15 of the New York passengers on the first leg were Nashville bound and all of them, like us, missed their connection in BWI.

Fortunately we were the last two passengers to get on the flight to Nashville. It was about 30 minutes late departing because it had arrived late into BWI due to weather in the Northeast.  

While boarding we walked by several very frustrated Nashville bound New Yorkers who were not so lucky.

Arriving into Nashville and retrieving bags, we were out of the Nashville Airport about 630pm. The drive home from BNA is about an hour for me so the door to door travel time from the hotel in Norwalk to the house was 13.5 hours.

On the GPS navigator that trip door to door is about 900 miles driving. Based on the drive miles we averaged 70 miles per hour door to door.

I have no complaints about Southwest Airlines. Their service was good as always. They don’t control weather and air traffic flow. The gate agents did an excellent job handling the passengers, some who were not so pleasant.  

My story could be told by millions of travelers. It happens every day in the system. All you need is a little rain and low cloud ceilings in the Northeast  and the log jam begins. It doesn’t unwind until the last aircraft hit their overnight destinations.

We have a Cirrus SR-22 available to us to fly for business. Had we taken the Cirrus we could have reduced that hotel to home travel time down to about 6.5 hours. This doesn’t account for the fact that we could have done the whole trip in two days instead of three by flying on our own schedule.

Next time I think I will fly myself and spend a few dollars more on using the Cirrus than the cost of airline tickets and the exrta hotel.

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An economy is defined by, or limited by, time and productivity. Value is created in an economy when an improved use of the resource of time creates gain in productivity.

The purpose of travel by aircraft is to gain time over other means of travel, time that can be used to create new value.

Inside the experience of travel the journey itself can either add to or subtract from productivity. If I can be productive while traveling I gain value during the travel in addition to the gains on both ends of the journey.

Every day, those of us in business aviation, witness the gains in productivity both in time saved and in the positive experience of travel by private and business aircraft.

Business travelers who have experienced this form of travel know what I am talking about.

Business travelers who use the airlines will testify to the negative impact on productivity from the time drain and wear and tear of airline travel.

The airlines, and the system they have created around the hub and spoke, have done a lot to try and ease the journey by creating nice terminals with food, shopping, and wifi connections to the Internet.  However, am I more productive sitting at the Airport Starbucks on my laptop for three hours waiting on the connecting flight, or being at my destination three hours earlier?

What about the time en-route?

If I can conduct a meeting in the air with clients, vendors or fellow workers what’s it worth?

When is the last time you had a business meeting while traveling on an airline in coach class or even in business class?

Business aviation wins hands down both in time saved in the journey and productivity experienced during the journey.

So why doesn’t everyone travel using a business aircraft?

Price and perceived value!

Business aviation is expensive when compared to the perceived value.

If our industry created a true cost-productivity calculator application that took into consideration not only the value of the time savings, but just importantly the productivity gains experienced during the journey, would it change the perception of the value of business aviation?

The technology is here today to do this.  

I would challenge our friends in the tech sector to come up with an application that calculates the “true costs” of the various modes of air travel.

What would an application like that be worth to those of us in Business Aviation?

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In an article in The Street online magazine titled “Why US Airlines pay more to finance jets” an interesting issue is raised about how the US Export Import Bank might be giving unfair advantage to the strongest of competitors to the US major air carriers.

I am a proponent of the US Export Import Bank (Ex-Im) as it promotes US exports through the financing of major capital purchases manufactured in the US. The assumption, or at least my assumption, is that this financing would be offered to companies in other countries who might not be able to obtain financing in their own country and thus not be able to make the purchase.

Under this assumption US industry wins with more jobs and import dollars.  

ExIm has been used to facilitate sales for the US aircraft manufacturing industry and especially Boeing. What would happen if Ex-Im did not exist to serve this purpose? I am not sure anyone could answer that question and I would bet that Boeing does not want to test the theory of no Ex-Im bank help. 

What is surprising about this article, and the information is conveys, is that the US is offering favorable terms to airlines who would have access to capital from their own financial markets.

These same foreign airlines are also competing heavily with the US mainline carriers like Delta on international routes. Delta and the ATA are crying foul ball.  

With a lower capital cost structure we are indeed giving the carriers like Emirates Airline a competitive advantage.

I don’t think this was the original intent of Ex-Im, which seems to have twisted the original purpose to help out Boeing.

Boeing needs to sell aircraft in a world market and by doing so they create a lot of high paying jobs and import dollars to the US economy.

Delta and other large US carriers need to compete in the international airline market with as level a playing field as possible.

This issue pits Boeing against the major US air carriers, some of their best customers.

Quoting from the article:

“The airline beneficiaries from the financing include nine of the ten most profitable airlines based outside of the U.S., France, Germany and the United Kingdom, May said. Among them: Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines and WestJet. They all “compete with U.S. airlines for U.S. passenger traffic,” May said. WestJet, founded in 1996, has received nearly $1.7 billion in Ex-Im Bank financing since fiscal 2002 — and has been able to take traffic from U.S. airlines as a result, he said. ”  

I wonder if Boeing’s major competitor EADS Airbus is able to offer similar government  backed financing terms as Boeing can offer through Ex-Im.

If so, then Boeing would be put to a disadvantage in selling its product to the world’s airlines without Ex-Im.

In a global economy working through these issues is complicated. Boeing and EADS Airbus are multinational companies with the makeup of their aircraft coming from worldwide suppliers, but at the end of the day Boeing is still made in America and Airbus is made in Europe.

The issue becomes political with the “Aircraft Sector Understanding” which codifies aircraft financing standards between the 33 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  What is your take on this?

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