One of the biggest drawbacks to superyacht chartering in the past has been the high cost of private aircraft to fly parties out to join the yacht and back again.
That might change now that Returnjet have come up with a way to search, track and directly reserve private jet travel via their online consolidation site.
With over two thirds of the UK’s private jet fleet registered onto this the world’s first ever system enabling end users to connect and book directly operators expect the system to lower the cost of private jet travel by broadening their customer base, maximizing positioning opportunities and empty legs (where private jets fly empty en route to pick ups).
Returnjet is essentially a ‘dating site.’ Its complexity is in its ability to interpret operators’ live data feeds to match operator’s real time and future jet positions and availability, thereby enabling it to effectively ‘hail a jet’ to suit the customer’s travel requirements via one easy to use search engine. It then simply pushes the customer enquiry to the operator of the appropriate jet to book directly. To date, there is no such facility of its kind worldwide.
Currently, operators are served by brokers who operate in an unlicensed industry. There are hundreds of brokers but actually only 30-35 AOC licensed operators managing the UK’s entire fleet of private jets.
In recent years, a few more progressive brokers have provided greater online transparency (most notably PrivateFly and Fly Victor) but to date there is no broker free comparison site connecting passengers directly to operators without any intermediary.
In providing the end user total access to live information, it guarantees total transparency and best value and is expected to ultimately reduce the global cost of private jet travel.
Returnjet expects to introduce European worldwide operators’ fleets during the course of 2014.