Simple Charters: Instant Private Flights | Hacker News Reader

Simple Charters: Instant Private Flights

simplecharters.com

Would be good to see anonymised examples of real flight charters so it's possible to get a feel for what a private flight might cost. Might save on tyre-kickers or encourage those who would've guessed it out of their league.

I really like how Flight Fox does this in showing sample trips. It allows you to see the sort of savings they've been able to find.

In the "how it works" the pictures show 4000-7500 usd (i think) per hour.

For a plane with how many seats? Screenshot suggests 4ish passengers, though the aircraft looks like it could carry more.

Am I missing something and this is a per-person cost? That surely wouldn't gel with the statement about it being a more affordable option for flights shorter than 300 miles?

Infographic from their blog: https://s3.amazonaws.com/simplecharters/jpeg.jpeg

The 3rd slide (coin-based histogram) has a disingenuous scale...is the vertical axis exponential or something?!

[edit] Looking further down, it turns out that all their graphs are horrific.

Saw that, but I don't know how each aircraft category correlates to capacity unless I guess. Hopefully they'll unveil full info soon.

For short flights, a heavy jet wouldn't be cheaper. But when you start looking into singles, twin engines or turboprops the prices for a short flight can become very competitive and affordable... especially when time is factored in.

~20-30k transcontinental?

Per person? Per plane of a certain size?

'Real customers. Real reviews.' (http://www.simplecharters.com/how-it-works)

featuring some real people http://bit.ly/Wo7h8T

stock photography has its place...but not beside this paragraph: "The idea of trusting a broker with your flight is crazy nowadays. Before you book your flight you can read real reviews from verified customers. Never again will you have to worry about whether or not you're getting a good deal, or will have an excellent flight!"

Took that down.

I never understand why sites feel the need to include the date in a copyright banner/footer (or why the copyright is even needed since it is automatically the case). But if you are going to do it, then make sure you update it otherwise it could be coming up to the end of February and a viewer seeing the previous year could wonder if the site is dead/stale/not maintained.

Prior to 1989 all works in the US required either a copyright notice or registration filing for copyright protection. This is no longer the case, but people still do it. Note that, if present, the date should be the date of publishing of the work in question. One might be able to argue that simply updating the page to change the copyright date without actually creating and publishing a new copyrightable work is not a valid copyright notice (but, again, this is all moot since you don't even need a copyright notice these days).

Don't the people who would use a service like this already have the money to use a consierge or assistant who would do the booking for them?

Well wouldn't a concierge/assistant be using it then? The value here is the network, which allows for greater flexibility when scheduling flights.

Won't the assistants and concierges wind up using a service like this?

Exactly.

I'd be really interested to see the pricing/commercials around this too. There was a startup that did exactly this a few years back that got Branson's attention and turned into Virgin Charter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Charter - I believe it got hit by the 2009 financial downturn.

I don't see prices anywhere, but I'm assuming this is one of those "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" type things.

would love to have an idea of what something like this would cost.

Didn't Warren Buffett run something like this? He always talks about how bad the airplane business is.

You're thinking NetJets, which is frac ownership.

Someone over there might want to take care with leftover bootstrap bits

http://www.simplecharters.com/assets/ico/apple-touch-icon-57...

Thanks for all the great input, especially the stock image and the bootstrap bits. That's since been fixed. It's tough to see this stuff yourself when you're staring at a problem for hours.

The affiliate programs for private jet travel can be $5k+ per referral. Seems like a good model.

looks like they're infected by the disqus ad campaign :(((

I was just thinking about this very thing yesterday. Neato.

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