Plane Conversations

“See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to *hold* the reservation and that’s really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.”

– Jerry Seinfeld

Investors in Social Flights include our dedicated operators, our loyal customers, our gracious parent company, and our visionary seed investors.  So we pose the following idea with data to back it up:

Social Flights can fly non-stop service that carries bumped passengers to their intended destination on a private jet for less than the financial cost and social burden of federal penalties and traveler disruption.

This article furnishes FAA data showing that during the month of July – September 2011, a total of 12,516 people were involuntarily denied boarding (bumped) despite the fact that they held reservations. This does not include passengers affected by cancelled, delayed or diverted flights.

This number falls precisely within the scale, distribution, and unique capabilities of Social Flights. From  FAA Air Consumer Report

Social Flights is a revolutionary tool that can help reduce the volatility in cooperation not in competition with the airlines by providing fractional scale capacity that is deployable with great speed, flexibility, and precision.

The presence of a Social Flights terminal at a large airport can provide an alternative for airlines to honor the reservations that their travelers hold.  Once a group 8, 20, 30, or 50 bumped passengers from all airlines converge to a single location, Social Flights can initiate a non-stop flight.  Airlines can often anticipate overbooking with substantial advanced notice.  Likewise, an aircraft that only fills less than, say 50% of it’s seats can disaggregated into several component destinations to be deployed by Social Flights.

The ability to absorb volatility in the Commercial Airline industry using private and public charter service is an important asset to commercial airlines, private carriers, and most importantly, the traveling public.  Social Flights predicts that the Commercial Carriers will soon see the benefit of cooperating with private capacity using the social aggregation tools of Social Flights.

This is déjà vu all over again.  By now I would have thought our Congress would have come up with a long term funding authorization for a very critical part of our nation’s infrastructure.  All of us under the big umbrella of aviation (airlines and GA) don’t agree all of the time but for once we all agree to the necessity of funding the FAA and the development of airports and Next Gen air traffic control systems.  We have even accepted the idea that fuel taxes will go up to help fund these initiatives.

ATW online reports that our Congress just passed the 20^th short term extension for funding the FAA.  That’s right, 20 extensions.  If I ran my business finances like that I would have been fired a long time ago.  Somehow our nation’s lawmakers can’t agree to get anything done about this yet no one seems to hold them accountable.

Quoting from the article “FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, Airports Council International-North America and airport directors around the US have been saying for some time that uncertainty over FAA funding, particularly the Airport Improvement Program that helps finance expansion programs, is causing disruptions to airport construction projects (ATW’s Airports Today, Oct. 5, 2010). “For over three-and-a-half years we’ve been operating on extensions,” Babbitt noted during a recent speech. “It’s been very difficult to run an agency on extensions … We need to restore long-term stability to funding.”

In addition to the disruption of airport construction projects and the stall in developing Next Gen, the FAA has basically shut down the certification of new Airlines and Charter operators. So how do we create any new jobs in our industry if startups can’t start? Those of us already flying are also having trouble getting anything done with an agency that doesn’t know where their next dollar is coming from.

The Democratic controlled Senate and the Republican controlled House can’t seem to figure this out. But this goes back to before the Republicans got control of the house. So it seems that doing nothing about an important issue is the way it goes these days in Washington DC.

Click on pen to

Maybe this most recent economic crisis wasn’t Armageddon, but I think I saw a Guernsey or two fall somewhere over central Mississippi.

The technology and practices of our industrial world are changing at a mind-boggling pace.  Since we started blogging just over a year ago, the advancements have been staggering, allowing us to begin developing a “wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if” idea into a “isn’t-it-be-incredible-that” reality.  However, if we had kept believing that we already knew it all, we would still be sitting on the porch, whittling, rocking in our chairs and wishing for a brighter reality. 

This Big Idea is a gamble, to be sure; Big Ideas always are.  But, to take our industry into its next great phase, we must accept that, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” We must reject bad managerial habits that keep us trapped in a paradigm which ceased to be profitable years ago.  Aircraft operators are frustrated by rising fuel prices, rising training costs, rising salary and benefits costs.  Equipment is getting older.  Remaining competitive means newer equipment, higher standards and better practices.  Meanwhile, many charter brokers insist on lower pricing, sometimes to the point of incorrectly educating the end-user on the actual cost of operating aircraft to the highest standards.  Sadly, even some operators have been willing to operate below cost just to produce the cash flow.  Reputable operators know what it costs to run a quality operation.  Reputable brokers also know this and are willing to support the operators’ reasonable pricing structures to their own clients.  But I digress.  My point is this: charter operators are frustrated with rates which are not keeping pace with rising costs.  Even with this frustration, we hamstring ourselves by acting conservatively out of fear of making mistakes and by avoiding anything new until it’s better understood.  Neither habit is bad altogether, but the over-application of either of them can be deadly. 

As I discussed the Big Idea with a few operators this week, I was discouraged at the response of many of them.  If the Idea is flawed, I would expect rejection and would hope that someone would point out the fatal flaw; but, that’s not why it was rejected.  Their rejection of the Idea stemmed from “I’ve never thought of that” and “We’ve never done it that way before,” not from the Idea’s merits or demerits.  It’s one thing for an industry to suffer or fail due to catastrophic and unforeseen market changes, but that isn’t the case here.  The market has been changing for at least the last 10 years.  As operators and brokers began aggressively selling one-way trips, introducing our product to a wider audience, the market has been changing.  As the global economy was reeling, our market changed further with more aggressive pricing, air taxi services, and ride sharing.  I often here people lamenting the loss of the “good old days.”  Let’s face it: the good old days weren’t all that great either.  We still struggled.  We still worked on narrow margins.  I don’t think we worked any less hard, but maybe we worked a little less creatively.

While we’ve gotten more creative, it’s time for us to make a big creative leap now.  Sharing flights is a creative way to broaden our market.  Using social technology to share those flights is a creative way to work smarter.  It’s the next Big Idea.

So, yes, 150 years ago, everybody knew man couldn’t fly.  70 years ago, everybody knew that supersonic flight was deadly.  And 15 minutes ago, you knew that shared flights would never work.   Once we accept that we don’t know our market as well as we think we do, we allow ourselves to adapt our industry to the new marketplace.  When we use social innovations like Social Flights to tap into that new marketplace, we broaden our reach.

If we can learn all of that today, embrace the Big Idea of flying socially, imagine what we’ll know tomorrow.

Click on pen to

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.

Click on pen to

Today marks the one year anniversary of this site we call Plane Conversations. When we started we knew what we wanted to accomplish but did not have an idea of where the hard work would take us in the first year.

This post is the 338^th by the writers, 14 in number, who have contributed. The page views according to the stats number about 45,000 in the first year. I can’t tell you whether that is good or bad. I like numbers, but quality seems to outweigh quantity for me after the first year in the world of social media.  

I am grateful to everyone who has contributed for their perspectives and stories about aviation. It would have gotten pretty dull had it just been me.   

About the same time we launched this site, we also made a strategic decision to use tools of Social Media to communicate to our market, our peers and those we hope to do business with. Today we have active Facebook friends numbering 1360, with several Facebook pages covering the different areas of our businesses. We also actively communicate through Twitter, as well as distributing our blog content through numerous other sites and social media applications. All of this has helped us reach and meet new people across the globe.  

At the outset we hoped to reach the audience of travelers who need Business Aviation but just haven’t realized it yet.

I believe in looking at our readers in the first year that we have communicated more to our own, those of us already in the business of aviation.

That’s OK though, because what this site has brought us are new relationships with people in business and general aviation around the world. Chances are we would have never met most of you any other way and that makes the effort worth it.

Who knows where the beginnings of these new found relationships will lead, but my hope is that we will mutually prosper. Maybe the shared knowledge will help us all in some way even if it is small. Many people have taken the time to read these posts and the hope is that the time was not wasted.

What are the lessons learned so far? 

• If you want to launch a blog site and contribute regularly be prepared for a serious time investment. It is much harder than I thought it would be.  
• You think you know what people are interested in but you really don’t know until you put it out there.
• Moving forward I want to spend more time thinking about what to write and put more effort into the quality of the posts and worry less about the quantity of posts.
• The more perspectives and stories we get from different people the better. After all this is a conversation, and conversations are best when there are more people participating.

Over the past year I have seen Business Aviation start to wakeup to the power of using social media and its technologies to communicate our message. Each week I become aware of new people on Twitter and Facebook. The ability to move the conversation to the positive in our industry has been tremendous. For the most part I believe we have silenced or at least neutralized the mainstream media bias against our industry; the bias that we were an industry for the rich and famous only.

I have seen the technology of social media develop so fast that no one can keep up with all of the changes happening. As Facebook and Skype come together in an integration of their communication services over 700 million people will be using the two together. That is a staggering number and it will grow.

Is there an opportunity to reach this audience with the message of our industry and what it can do for people’s time and lifestyle? There has to be, so maybe the best is yet to come.  

Thanks to all of you have taken time out of your busy lives to read a post or two.

Thanks to the writers, and especially Jon Anne and Rachel who have not only written, but contributed by editing and proofing the rest of us, as well as distributing the posts out to all of the other sites and applications. Your tireless efforts have made this happen. It has been a true team effort.

A big thanks to Benet, Rob, Clint, Paula and other friends who have promoted our message and site in a social way. We have learned much from you and will continue to listen and learn. 

I look forward to this next year and what it will bring to those of us in Business Aviation who have weathered the storm of the past two years. Never before have we had the opportunity to tell our message like we do now. It will be great to see the impact that “Social Media”  has on Business Aviation.

Click on pen to

In college, I took a class called International Strategies and Security.  I believe that I may have been the only non-military student in the class which, for a civilian, turned out to be like a Tom Clancy novel – only it lasted for a whole semester.  We discussed technology that just blew my mind.  I had no idea the things that were possible and I’m sure that what blew my mind then is Stone Age compared to what is possible now.

So yesterday, we talked a little bit about test flights Alaska Airlines is conducting to be greener both environmentally and economically.  I think that there is a lot to celebrate with that.  My one concern with their reliance (and more, with NextGen’s reliance) on satellite technology is the increase in solar storms projected over the next few years.  I am curious to see how the technologists will handle it.

Since the systems do rely on satellite communication, they will be vulnerable to solar flares and storms, the kind we discussed back in March, which brings me back to the same concerns I expressed then.  With so many new pilots being trained using only glass cockpits and satellite approaches, what happens when those systems are compromised?  Worse, what happens when those systems are compromised and the pilots don’t know it?  NextGen, RNP, OPD and RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum) are all designed to increase efficiency by tightening up the airspace.  This precision puts more aircraft into smaller spaces.  Well, if a pilot was flying along a flight path ten years ago, he might have encountered another aircraft along the same path; but, since neither of them was flying with today’s degree of precision, there was still likely to be a safe distance between the aircraft.  However, with todays’ greater precision, the space is greatly reduced.  If all systems are operating as advertised, that’s no problem.  In fact, it’s positive situation.  However, if solar flares contaminate the positioning information, an aircraft may be hundreds of feet off position and not know it.  If two aircraft are in the same situation, but are separated by only a few hundreds of feet to begin with, well, you do the math.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently awarded $125 million to Boeing and other companies to develop greener aircraft, fuels and technology.   As aircraft become more advanced and the Gee-Whiz factor in them increases, by definition, they get further away from the simple, stick-controlled Stearman.  I love the advances, don’t get me wrong.  I just know that a great many young pilots are learning on advanced equipment and may not be learning some of the manual basics of their predecessors.  For now, the young group still has access to pilots trained without all of the gizmos.  Those pilots are available to act as mentors and assist the younger generation of aviators in gaining some wisdom, an invaluable asset, as Billy Minkoff pointed out last week.  His example of the new, accessible very light jet and microjet is perfectly appropriate here.  As precision flying gets more precise and pilot training gets further removed from non-precision equipment, without mentoring, how do we avoid the dangers of corrupted satellite data?

What technology and training do we develop to slow or halt the current trend as expressed by CFM Director of Operations Dwayne McMurry, “It used to be that the last words on a cockpit voice recorder were ‘Oh, (explicative)!’  What you hear these days is, ‘What’s it doing now?’ “

Click on pen to

Airlines are trying to make a profit; something that has not happened in aggregate in their entire history of serving the traveling public. In an effort to make a profit in the past few years they have unbundled their pricing and added fees back in for everything imaginable.

I can’t blame them for trying to make profit. Profit is not a bad word. 

But somehow this whole idea of  add-on fees is having an anti-social effect on the traveling public. Mainstream media has spent a great deal of space on this issue.  The latest comes from the New York Times in an article titled “Airline Fees Test Travelers’ Limits”. 

You can almost feel sorry for the airlines because it seems at every turn they are getting kicked by either the government or the media. And the more kicking they do, the more the public demands a change. It is almost to a point where we feel that we have a fundamental right to travel cheaply by air and without problems. I don’t remember seeing this in the Constitution, but you never know. An amendment dealing with airline travel may be forthcoming.     

Congress thinks they can solve it by putting more rules (laws) in place to regulate everything from how you advertise your rates to how long you can keep a person stranded on an aircraft sitting on the tarmac. How can you regulate customer service?   

 I wonder if there is a point where the airlines figure this out?  The solutions are neither simple nor obvious because the airlines must make a profit.  At this point, though, they don’t seem to have a vision of how they can create both profits and happy customers.

 We run a business that offers an alternative form of travel. It is not cheap, but travelers do like to travel in our aircraft. 

Most days we have happy customers. Occasionally we make a mistake or weather and the laws of mechanical physics conspire against us and we end up with an unhappy customer. The air conditioner breaks on the hottest of days or weather prevents us from departing or making an on time arrival or …..

 When that happens, it is up to us to make it right. We should do what it takes to fix it. If we don’t make it right, then shame on us. Those customers who see you do the right thing when things go wrong become the best customers. When you don’t do the right thing, then the customers go somewhere else for the solution.  

Our customers are smart and successful people. They run businesses themselves and know what it takes to deliver their product or service at a profit while meeting the expectations of their customers. They also know that things can sometimes go wrong; so, mostly, I have seen a degree of patience from our customers to allow us to “make it right.”

I don’t see that with the airlines. Patience has run out. As the NYT article title suggests “travelers’ limits are tested”.

One side of me smiles and says I hope that the airlines keep doing more of what they are doing. It pushes people to consider using our form of air travel even though the dollar cost is more.

The other side of me says that the airlines need to figure out how to make their customers happy if at all possible.  The economy of this country will win if they do that.

The bottom line is that travel is about productivity. Efficient travel contributes to economic productivity and inefficient travel kills productivity. Stress in travel has to reduce productivity, too.  Let’s figure out how to eliminate the stress.

Click on pen to

Loveland Colorado’s Public Works Director  has announced a new program they hope to put into place at the Ft. Collins – Loveland Airport soon and it is called “Wingless Flight”.

I heard of this concept a few years ago and then the idea went away. I am not sure why it did not take off a few years ago but I would venture a guess that TSA could not get their heads around it.  

Basically you would drive to the Ft. Collins Airport, park, check your bags and clear security there, but instead of boarding a plane you will board a bus that will take you to Denver International (DIA). Once you arrive at DIA you will be deposited in the terminal with all security screening having been handled in Ft. Collins.

So what is the advantage of this?

If properly run it could save both time and money. Parking at Ft. Collins is easy and cheap,  and clearing security and going through the lines will take a minute or two versus the sometimes hour long wait at DIA.

I think success would depend on a high frequency of bus trips with a reliable time schedule so that users of this service can count on not spending a lot of time at DIA before they actually board their flight.  

If I lived in the Loveland area and got off a flight at DIA coming home and had to wait any time at all at DIA for the bus  back to Loveland I would lose patience. Once I am home, as in back to the terminal at home base, I can’t wait to get out of the terminal building to really get home.

Operating under the premise that we all fly to save time, anything that can reduce the door to door travel experience should be a winner. If it doesn’t really save time then saving a few bucks on parking won’t push people to do it?

The comments in the 9News.com  article about this are for the most part skeptical. One commenter states that this has already been tried in Boulder a few years ago.   

I have seen an almost similar scenario in Vienna, Austria, where we checked our bags at the rail station downtown that runs non-stop to the airport. We still had to clear security at the airport; but, at least we got rid of the bags. Europe, with its developed mass transit rail system, has the airport to rail connection down to a science. Most major airports are connected to a rail system by a short walk out of the terminal building.  

Give these guys in Loveland  an “A” for effort and innovation. Time will tell if the idea catches on.

Anything to reduce friction in travel is good. With the exception of price, travel by private aircraft takes care of all of the issues this proposed service are attempting to solve. How about a private flight out of Loveland Airport non-stop to your destination on your schedule.  Bypass DIA entirely!

Click on pen to

I like the idea of the taxi cab. When visiting large or unfamiliar cities, the taxi cab is my point-to-point machine of choice.  They are quick and convenient.  And besides that, they’ve provided some of the  most exhilarating rides I have taken - taxis in Abuja, Nigeria, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, come to mind specifically. You haven’t lived until you’ve ridden in a taxi in Abuja, and on a trip to Philly a few years ago, like a true NASCAR racer, our taxi driver locked in behind an ambulance with flashing lights and sirens, drafting to get us downtown from the airport like he was on the track at the Pocono 500. 

When most people think of business aviation, they visualize a nice eight to twelve passenger business jet with a luxurious interior of leather and fine wood.  They think of galleys stocked with prepared gourmet meals and good wine.  And, that is part of the industry, to be sure; but, it’s not all of the industry.

What about the 212 mph taxi cab?

Cirrus Design and their new generation aircraft – the SR-22 – has created a new market in business travel.  Research on the Air Charter Guide shows over 40 charter operators across the United States operating Cirrus aircraft in charter service.

Why does the single-engine aircraft work in air taxi service today when it did not work prior to Cirrus?  Perception and Reality.

Perception: Single-engine aircraft are (were) not safe because they only have one engine. What happens if the engine quits?

Reality: Cirrus overcame the perception with the reality of an on board parachute system as a last resort means to deal with engine failures and other emergencies. It has been tested, and it works.  

Perception: Charter service on single-engine aircraft is unreliable since the planes can fly only in clear weather during daylight hours.

Reality: Prior to Cirrus, the single engine piston engine powered aircraft was only certified to fly under Visual Flight Rules (VFR – clear weather) and in the day time. With advances in technology and redundancy in electrical systems, Cirrus was able to certify the aircraft with the FAA to fly charter flights in Instrument Flight Rules (IFR – in the clouds) conditions, and to fly at night. This allowed a reliability of scheduling the air taxi ride in advance, with less worry about what the weather was going to be like on the day of the trip. This was the major game changer!

The innovation of single-engine air taxi in both aircraft design and service offering is part of the new productive and efficient way to do business travel. It may not be as glamorous and comfy as the business jet, but it is very cost-efficient.

So, welcome to the age of the 212 mph taxi ride! It may not be as flashy as the jet, but it beats waiting for gate announcements.  Besides, it is a whole lot more fun and in no way scary like the taxi rides in Philly or Abuja.

Click on pen to

“Group Buying” was an idea that first surfaced during the “dot com” boom and ultimately failed to build any momentum.  The idea is again gaining popularity in the era of social media where scalability can be introduced as aggregation cost diminish on applications such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ditch the gatekeeper, axe the marketers, lose the spam.

My first reaction is to find the most unsavory business transactions today and eliminate all the unnecessary middle men and their costs, gateways, noise pollution, and inefficiencies.

Why can’t there be one cell phone store where I can buy anything for any mobile device? Why do I have to pay to use my credit card and pay to not use my credit card? Why am I still treated like a terrorist precisely when I am doing everything that I can to avoid terrorists?

There are some glimmers on the horizon.

Applications such as SocialBuy, Groupon, and Living Social, use their social media platforms that offer vouchers for steep discounts on a variety of goods, once a minimum threshold of consumers is reached.  People have an economic incentive to promote products in their social network (on Facebook and Twitter) in order to reach those thresholds more rapidly and consistently.

Product Networks?

Suppose the group buying experience could aggregate packages of products.  Strategic products would then be aggregated as  ”A Network of Products” that together increase net value.  Yes, you heard me…a ‘combination of products’ with Twitter followers.  A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.

This is not so strange.

Apple’s enduring success is very much a model of commercial social aggregation. Nobody can compete with an iPhone without also offering iTunes, iMovie, iPad, and all the social trappings of the iStore.  Perhaps Google, with its social commercial network can compete resulting in a duopoly.  Group buying can empower the smaller players and bust monopolies in an infinite array of combinations.

Why not air travel?

The door-to-door travel time and social cost to fly between two small cities, say, 500 miles apart using commercial airlines is greater than just driving. There is no other alternative, sans high-speed rail, and the economic result is that the two cities remain small with very little new commerce or diffusion of new ideas that air travel benefits a region.  People just don’t travel much between, say, Omaha NE and Cheyenne, WY.

Yet, small city pairs within 500 miles have strong extended family roots, migration patterns, and social network density.  It would be relatively easy to offer Group Buying on a 20-25 seat private airplane for less than the cost of driving; and in 1/10 the time!

The travel package could include ground transportation, shopping coupons, and maybe even a A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.

Every small city economic development agency in the country should be in this business of building social networks and matching them with product networks between other small city pairs…

Click on pen to