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Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

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Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#21

Post by rdl »

jasonkester wrote: post #16

I've got a better idea in the same space. I've always wanted somebody to take the idea of "leave when full" minibuses in the 3rd world and apply it to popular airline routes. How cool would it be if there was an operator running flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco using small commuter jets with no fixed schedule and plenty of planes. You'd just turn up, buy a ticket, make your way to the gate, and get on the pl…

There were "air shuttle" or "air bus" services, using small jets, on super high volume routes: SIN-KUL, DCA-JFK, Great Britain to Ireland. You'd buy a ticket, which was a right to fly on any flight, and then walk up to board and get on the next flight; they were frequent enough (every 30 minutes?) that it wasn't really an issue.

This only really works on very high volume routes, and the problem is your aircraft basically need to be dedicated to that route; a lot of the short flights otherwise (SFO-LAX for instance) are continuations of longer flights, which allow a carrier to for instance do a BKK-NRT-SFO-LAX flight and offer nonstop BKK-NRT (if they have 5th freedom), NRT-SFO, SFO-LAX, and direct BKK-LAX, BKK-SFO, BKK-LAX, NRT-LAX, using one aircraft (and probably 2 crews).

I think security screening is what killed the "air bus" market.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#22

Post by jasonkester »

corin_ wrote: post #17
jasonkester wrote: post #16

I've got a better idea in the same space. I've always wanted somebody to take the idea of "leave when full" minibuses in the 3rd world and apply it to popular airline routes. How cool would it be if there was an operator running flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco using small commuter jets with no fixed schedule and plenty of planes. You'd just turn up, buy a ticket, make your way to the gate, and get on the pl…

Personally I'd rather know the exact time I'm going to be taking off, so I can turn up at the perfect time (when I fly, at least out of England where I know the airports well enough, I turn up, drop off baggage, drink a coffee while smoking a cigarette, go through security, and I sit down in my seat a couple of minutes before the plane moves away from the gate). As opposed to your system, where I turn up, get on the…

Even if that unknown amount of time averaged 7 minutes?

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#23

Post by corin_ »

jasonkester wrote: post #22
corin_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd rather know the exact time I'm going to be taking off, so I can turn up at the perfect time (when I fly, at least out of England where I know the airports well enough, I turn up, drop off baggage, drink a coffee while smoking a cigarette, go through security, and I sit down in my seat a couple of minutes before the plane moves away from the gate). As opposed to your system, where I turn up, get on the…

Even if that unknown amount of time averaged 7 minutes?

Find my any flight path that is active enough to fill a commercial plane every 7 minutes and I'll concede that it's an amazing idea.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#24

Post by jasonkester »

hammock wrote: post #18
jasonkester wrote: post #16

I've got a better idea in the same space. I've always wanted somebody to take the idea of "leave when full" minibuses in the 3rd world and apply it to popular airline routes. How cool would it be if there was an operator running flights from Los Angeles to San Fransisco using small commuter jets with no fixed schedule and plenty of planes. You'd just turn up, buy a ticket, make your way to the gate, and get on the pl…

Most of the weekday traffic is business travelers, who have meetings scheduled and need to be guaranteed on the ground at a certain time. That would certainly work for a lot of leisure travel though. Part of the reason why it's considered a sign of a civilized country if their trains run on time.

Actually, I think it would work a lot better for business travelers, since it optimizes for minimum wait time at the expense of, well, expense.

If you take a commercial flight today, you are guaranteed to be at the airport for 1-2 hours, and chances are you'll pad that out a bit if you're headed to an important meeting. If you billed your time at $300/hr, wouldn't you pay a little extra to know your car-to-air time would be less than half an hour?

And, assuming you still show up at the airport a bit early just in case, wouldn't you rather spend that extra time sipping a Starbucks downstairs from your client's office rather than waiting at the gate?

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#25

Post by jasonkester »

corin_ wrote: post #23
jasonkester wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that unknown amount of time averaged 7 minutes?

Find my any flight path that is active enough to fill a commercial plane every 7 minutes and I'll concede that it's an amazing idea.

Actually, it'd be every 15 minutes to average a 7 minute wait.

And to find routes, simply look at Southwest's schedule between major airports. Or any commuter airline between New York and Chicago. If they're filling a 150 seat plane every 45 minutes, you could certainly fill a 20 seater in 15.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#26

Post by tekgnos »

You guys are missing the major cost savings while pouring over the numbers. It all comes from empty private jets as loarabia pointed out.

Private jets fly empty all the time. This would be additional revenue for the owner/operators of the private jets. Notice that most of the flights are one way. That is because the jet is flying empty to pick up the real passengers, who pay, essentially, for the jet to come get them and take them where they are going.

The real problem is what happens when wealthy people who fly private realize that poor schmucks are flying on their dime.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#27

Post by hugh3 »

jasonkester wrote: post #25
corin_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find my any flight path that is active enough to fill a commercial plane every 7 minutes and I'll concede that it's an amazing idea.

Actually, it'd be every 15 minutes to average a 7 minute wait. And to find routes, simply look at Southwest's schedule between major airports. Or any commuter airline between New York and Chicago. If they're filling a 150 seat plane every 45 minutes, you could certainly fill a 20 seater in 15.

Slots at major airports are very expensive, and scheduled very carefully. You could only do this if you used minor airports, which would probably kill the convenience factor.

edit: Actually there probably are pairs of cities where it could be made to work by using small, low-traffic, convenient-to-the-city airports which can't handle large planes. But now your main problem is chicken-and-egg: until you have a lot of customers you can't possibly run a frequent service, and the customers won't be interested unless it's frequent. I suppose you could take off every twenty minutes regardless of passenger load, but in that case your operating costs are going to be enormous from day one.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#28

Post by hammock »

jasonkester wrote: post #24
hammock wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the weekday traffic is business travelers, who have meetings scheduled and need to be guaranteed on the ground at a certain time. That would certainly work for a lot of leisure travel though. Part of the reason why it's considered a sign of a civilized country if their trains run on time.

Actually, I think it would work a lot better for business travelers, since it optimizes for minimum wait time at the expense of, well, expense. If you take a commercial flight today, you are guaranteed to be at the airport for 1-2 hours, and chances are you'll pad that out a bit if you're headed to an important meeting. If you billed your time at $300/hr, wouldn't you pay a little extra to know your car-to-air time w…

I'm not sure why you think your idea would shave off any time from the car-to-air sequence. If anything it would add time-

You still have to get a boarding pass, go through security, walk down the terminal to the gate. The only difference is, normally you can plan ahead and waste no time since you know when your plane will be taking off. With your new system, once you get to the gate the plane might be full so you have to wait another hour (and maybe even go to a new gate).

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#29

Post by jdh »

Woo -- 12 whole flights completed. Yawn, until we see something scale.

It's easy to overrate the savings opportunities in private air travel: there are empty seats! there are deadhead flights with no passengers!

But hard to realize those savings. You need enormous scale. And most private jets would be far less comfortable than an MD80 or 737 if all the seats were full and it wasn't your friends or family -- loud, no headroom, no service, tiny bathroom. They make up for it by flying where you want, when you want -- but we lose those a lot of those benefits with this "solution".

As said, this makes no sense hub to hub. Flying from Lubbock to Springfield? Maybe. Good luck filling those other six seats, and also filling that deadhead flight back.

Re: Fly Like You're Rich With Social Flights (And Private Planes)

#30

Post by asmithmd1 »

hammock wrote: post #28
jasonkester wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think it would work a lot better for business travelers, since it optimizes for minimum wait time at the expense of, well, expense. If you take a commercial flight today, you are guaranteed to be at the airport for 1-2 hours, and chances are you'll pad that out a bit if you're headed to an important meeting. If you billed your time at $300/hr, wouldn't you pay a little extra to know your car-to-air time w…

I'm not sure why you think your idea would shave off any time from the car-to-air sequence. If anything it would add time- You still have to get a boarding pass, go through security, walk down the terminal to the gate. The only difference is, normally you can plan ahead and waste no time since you know when your plane will be taking off. With your new system, once you get to the gate the plane might be full so you ha…

If you use the general aviation terminal there is no security or boarding passes. You just have to know the tail number of your airplane as a kind of password.
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