Plane Conversations

Part 4 in a Series on Social Media and Business Aviation: Written In Collaboration with Jay Deragon

Over the past few weeks I have posted several articles on social media – the new method of communicating to the market. I am an admitted novice in the world of social media and technology, but my eyes are starting to open to the possibilities created when social technology and business aviation collide.

We have discussed the opportunity social media presents to fight the war the airlines have declared on general aviation by getting our message out in an unfiltered way.  We have also discussed social media as a means to increase our visibility to the market as well as to communicate with that market in order to innovate and better meet its needs on its own terms. All of these are game changing strategies.

So now I want to ask some what ifs!

What if there was a social grid or network built for the purpose of becoming the e-marketplace for private and business aviation travel solutions? What if this social network allowed, encouraged and facilitated the market to come together to aggregate a demand that is currently outside of the supply that  traditional channels of distribution make available to the market?

What if the market could then go to the suppliers of private aviation and request trips or routes of travel where individual travelers could buy seats, filling the aircraft, driving the price down?  Maybe the price would still not be as low as mass transit airline travel, but still would be much lower than today’s pricing of private aircraft flights.

What if travelers could input their travel profiles into the social grid in such a way as to speak to the entire market and to form affinities around common travel patterns? Would travelers be willing to share their travel  information with the market in a profile, sharing where they go, when and how often? Would travelers talk to each other about their travel needs if those conversations led to more new, innovative and efficient travel solutions than have ever existed before?

What if all air charter providers and small scheduled airlines (niche airlines) could input supply into the grid, including empty legs?  What if on-demand charters were quoted instantly so that the market had real time visibility to the solutions they need? What if all of these suppliers could participate on a level playing field and in a system that costs the users only when a transaction takes place?

What if the other parts of the business travel supply chain were able to participate as well? Would the hotels, resorts, rental car and limousine services have an interest in participating in the grid?

What if private aviation operators could collaborate to create a bigger market?  What if we woke up someday and realized that we’ve been monopolized by technology controlled by some organization that isn’t even in our business? What if we all created a new collective “social grid” in which the general market of travelers realized they could use our system rather than the old commercial system?

What if we could collectively reinvent ourselves as an industry with the aim of serving the larger market? What would be required? Who would agree to collaborate? Who would agree that if we don’t, someone else will?  And we’ll all lose when we should have been leading all along?

If we could simply start to build a dialog around all of these questions what could we do? Should we do it? If not, then let’s not even try to answer these questions.  Let’s keep doing what we’ve been doing. Einstein once said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  What happens if we all decide to be sane?

If you think we need to do something else then join me and invite others to join us in creating a new future where we can all win.

Who will jump into the dialog? Who will invite others to do so as well? Is there anyone out there?

Where are the answers to all of these “what ifs”? Could they be out there in the market of conversations that could create the new system that creates the answers?

The answers are out there in the minds of people wanting to create a new future. Are you one of them?

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Private aviation uses the term “legs” to indicate lanes of travel from point A to B. In order to optimize the productivity of an aircraft the destination flight needs to be booked as well as the return flight. However, most return flights from B to A go empty and the originator of the charter has to pay for unused “legs and seats”.

Seems to me that such a scenario represents sub-optimization of the aircraft. Sub-optimization is a waste of an asset and increases the cost of using the asset; thus, limiting the market of users of the asset. Make sense?

Now if we examined new methods aimed at optimizing use of private aviation the answer lies in filing both legs, or expanding legs, and seats with business travelers wanting to go from different points within a “leg” to another point.  The model is exactly how commercial aviation maximizes sales of seats within legs they have determined as “used frequently” by the general public.

Applying New Methods To Private Aviation

Private aviation has a much larger reach in terms of probable destinations for business travelers.  The private aviation industry serves a larger scope of available destinations than does commercial aviation. The problem is that each operator runs their “legs and seats” in a silo of distribution and market awareness. Most operators serve regular customers and wait for the phone to ring to initiate a flight. In other words, operators usually wait until the market comes to them rather than going to a larger market of probable travelers needing to get to and from a destination.

Each private aviation operator runs a sub-optimized system and, given today’s economic climate, they are all feeling the reduction of old utilization models and have assets sitting around waiting to be used. The collective waste of all these sub-optimized systems represents billions of dollars annually and many operators will not survive.

What If?

What if there was a new system aimed at optimization of all available equipment, planes, legs and seats? What if  each operator’s individual system was effectively and efficiently communicated to the general market of business travelers? In other words, if an open source grid of  legs and seats were made available to anyone and everyone, and said grid was effectively communicated to the general public of business travelers, what would happen? The likely results would be the the ability to lower the cost of private aviation, which would expand the market to the general public of business travelers. Subsequently, operators would have the opportunity to optimize legs, seats and related assets. The general business traveler would be given the opportunity  for a much more efficient and accommodating experience than commercial travel and while saving time and money. While the cost may be slightly higher than using fixed routes on commercial aircraft, the time saving and experiential factor would easily justify the increase cost.

Sound crazy? Not really when you consider the power and reach of social technology which could easily communicate available legs and seats to a very large audience.  The technology to create an entire private aviation social grid is readily available and the use of social technology would provide the reach to the general business traveler.

Can you tell I want to go back to using private aviation vs. commercial? I am trying to stir thinking out of the box and collaboration for the benefit of all. Leadership and innovation would be needed to capture market opportunity. Does this make any sense?

What say you?

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I have been blessed and cursed at the same time. As a management consultant the use of my time is the critical elements that fuels my personal economy. Early in my career I decided that having a private plane was a valuable tool in saving me time and allowing me to be more productive.

I started out using a single engine Cessna then quickly moved up to an MU2 for speed and distance. Then I went to a Lear 25 and the last aircraft I had was a Lear 35. Over a period of roughly ten years I became accustomed to the luxury and utility of having my own aircraft to take me where  and when I wanted to go. To say the least the experience spoiled me and after selling my business I could no longer afford or justify having a plane for personal or professional use.

Back To Commercial

After taking some time off from the business world I decided to get back in the game. Being back in the game ultimately means travel is inevitable. They say “once a consultant always a consultant“ and so I find myself back into consulting but focused on helping organizations use  social technology for business purposes.

Over the last five years I have had to travel frequently and unfortunately it has been on commercial airlines. To say that the experience is a big time waste and anti-social is to put it mildly. Commercial air travel is at its lowest point of experience and efficiency.  I am sure everyone can and will relate.  So I ask and desire to go back to private aviation but seek ways to do so without the traditional excessive cost of ownership.

Private Aviation Needs To Change

The private aviation industry, like all industries, gets stuck believing in old business models and subsequently fails to see alternative models. Business models change as markets shift. If you haven’t noticed all markets are shifting not only because of the old economy but because of a new economy.

The new economy is about communication, deep and wide. The new economy is being transformed from the fundamental way we are revolutionizing communications. Communication is the foundation of society, of our culture, of our humanity, of our own individual identity, and of all economic systems.  Communication, and its ally computers, is a special case in economic history. Not because it happens to be the fashionable leading business sector of our day, but because its cultural, technological, and conceptual impacts reverberate at the root of every business including private aviation.

Private aviation is no longer in the business of just flying rather it is in the business of communications using every kind of media available. Think about it. The industry uses terms like “legs, charter, FBO’s” and a host of other nomenclature that most people don’t understand.  Given the current economic pressures on private aviation operations one must ask “how, what, when, where, why and whom are they communicating to?”.  It seems that most are communicating to the same limited and depressed market of existing private aviation users.  How is that working for you? In other words everyone is chasing a smaller piece of an old pie rather than working together to increase the size of a new pie and making it available to more people.  Get it?

Wouldn’t it make sense to expand the market of private aviation users? To do so operators would have to work together to find ways to lower the overall cost of private aviation. What if all those empty legs and available seats were made available to the general public? Could you communicate and fill the planes at a per seat cost rather than a “total plane cost”? If you did would the public opt in for a seat?

You could and the public would respond and quickly become spoiled by the experience. However, to optimize the use of planes you’d have to cooperate with every operator and help each other optimize the entire system. That may be hard to do unless the industry begins to think differently and agrees to collaborate. Who is willing to try? If you don’t you’ll end up fighting for what you currently have which is less.

Somebody please help me get back to private aviation. Got any empty seats?

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I was sitting across the table from prospective clients at lunch recently talking about the two aircraft they own.  We were discussing the opportunity to put one of these aircraft into charter service since it was not being used enough by the owner and selling at this point was not the best option.

One of my lunch guests is an industry veteran pilot who has been flying corporate jets since the 1960’s when Bill Lear first produced the Learjet.  He has been in corporate aviation as well as the aircraft charter business and has flown thousands of hours with executives and entertainers alike in the back of his aircraft.  The other guest was the financial manager for the aircraft owner and comes from the perspective of the cost side of our business.

The discussions migrated to the costs of this business and the question that comes up so often - does this business aviation make economic sense to those who own corporate jets and those who use them?

I made the statement that from a pure economic rationale, the corporate jet may not be the best investment. I was speaking about buying an aircraft to put into commercial service as a charter aircraft. The seasoned pilot was quick to correct me that what we offer is a tool that creates time and, that if you look at an executive’s time value, it makes perfect sense.  He was speaking from the perspective of the user of the asset and not the commercial owner of the asset - and he is right.  What we sell is time with a measure of privacy, security and first class treatment thrown in to make it a more pleasurable experience.  But, at the core, it is still about the value of time.  

I asked the question of these two guests, “Does anyone ever want to go back and fly on the airlines once they have experienced riding on a corporate jet?”  The answer I got was the same one I get every time I ask that question – a resounding NO!

Setting aside the economics of business aviation and speaking only of the pure experience, corporate and charter aircraft provide a service that people really like, especially in comparison to the alternative of the airlines.  In fact people don’t just like our form of air travel; they love it and are passionate about it.  Could it be that deep down these people put a high value on that most precious of resources – time?

The airlines have tried to emulate what we do by providing service extras like pre-boarding for premium fliers, but you can’t turn a pumpkin into a carriage, you can’t turn a bus ride into a limousine experience, and the airlines can’t save you the time that we can.

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