'Uber for private jets' is grounded, but CEO says he hopes to raise more money | Hacker News Reader

'Uber for private jets' is grounded, but CEO says he hopes to raise more money

boston.com

21 pointsmorisy28 comments

So they sold seats on smaller jets ("private jets") between 10 cities. They may not have realized it, but they were just an airline with really bad economics.

Hint: You don't want to own the heavy inventory, just have control of it when needed. Uber doesn't own the cars.

Blackjet didn't own the jets.

They were buying some sort of inventory (seats or flights outright), correct? -> You are now an airline.

airbnb, über, ebay and craigslist don't have any expensive inventory. They just provide the eyeballs and matching venue to make business happen. That's what those guys should have done.

I can't fathom this working. Why not just fly first class? The purpose of private jets is flexibility and privacy. If you want to pay up, NetJets is an option. But perhaps I'm not their target customer.

No security line. More flexibility about when you go. There's nothing like flying in a private plane.

But there isn't more flexibility around when you go. You need to give 2 days notice. If you own a private jet you give 45 mins notice and roll.

Yes, I wasn't referring to this service in particular, but meant flying in private planes in general. The biggest problem with this company is that small planes don't get the economies of scale that larger aircraft get. They don't get reasonable seat costs per mile (the pilots cost the same flying 10 people vs. 100 people, you still need baggage handlers, etc.). The second you scale up to a larger plane, you're not giving the same level of service (you need security, have to corral more people, etc.).

There's a reason why Warren Buffett calls his jet "The Indefensible". There's no way you could ever rationalize the cost, other than flying private planes is freaking awesome.

I signed up for TSA Pre and haven't seen a security line since.

No, I mean NO security line. You can drive your car out onto the tarmac, hop in the plane, and have your rental car/limo waiting for you on the tarmac on the other side. You don't even have to look at a TSA agent.

This is the reason why all of the BS exists around flying commercially. If truly wealthy individuals had to suffer through that, airport security would have been dismantled years ago.

Yes, I understand -- just saying that you can mitigate it enough that you don't need a private plane. If you fly Virgin upper class, for instance, you get pretty much what you describe. A car will pick you up and deliver you behind all the typical airport security with your boarding documents.

Right, but - Virgin upper class if you're flying out of NYC, for example, can get you to....the UK. And a limited number of times a day.

Private planes are absolutely awesome for getting between inconvenient points domestically. Have to get from San Jose to Austin on short notice? A quick skim of ITA shows coach fares of $1k and they all require a stop somewhere, with an average duration of 7-ish hours.

Or, hop on a private jet, skip security, take off pretty much whenever you're ready to take off, nad then come back when you want it.

Don't tell the terrorists.

The point is the terrorists should never make it onto the tarmac, if the FBI, etc. are doing their jobs.

Arguably even into the country, if the other agencies are doing their jobs, and assuming the threat is foreign.

Or there are many fewer terrorists than would justify the Homeland Security budget.

I have TSA Pre as well but the past three times I have flown those lanes were closed. They are only open certain times.

First rule of TSA Pre: don't talk about TSA Pre. The less people that sign up the shorter the line.

Probably not the target customer indeed. Try doing 3 legs in 3 different same coast cities in a single day for in-person meetings. It's only possible with private jets as you can dictate the time to depart.

sounds like a business case for videoconference software/hardware.

Just kidding :)

Check out JetSuite of SurfAir. I think it's $3k from SFO to SEA on JetSuite. Coast to coast may be more difficult economically.

Hindsight is always golden but ths particular idea always seemed to me to be the handiwork of investors & execs in the Silicon Valley bubble extrapolating their needs and wants to the rest of the general population.

From the investor list, it sounds more like celebrities extrapolating their needs to the rest of us.

This reminds me of the urban legend of a Hedge Fund exec's kid who didn't know the word "airplane", only "private jet".

well, there seems to be uncanny valley between flying an airline, even in business/first class and private jet using something like prepaid fractional card (like NetJet Marquis - last time i heard it was 100K for 25 hours, today probably somewhat higher).

Of course the valley is for the reason, yet for some above mentioned people it may look like a business opportunity. Anyway, they raised 2M - peanuts for VC to explore on practice whether it is opportunity or not.

One of the problems is that a mid-size business jet (say Citation X or Gulfstream V/G550)costs as much to fly as a regional airliner like a Embraer E170/190($10k+/Hour) due to engine design optimization and is only marginally faster than the E170 in flight time assuming both fly non-stop.

Smaller business jets don't have the fuel range to do a coast-to-coast flight non-stop with passengers. E170/190s can be fitted with auxiliary tanks for coast-to-coast corporate shuttle flights.

I love how the company didn't get mentioned in the headline, but Uber did.

Business opportunity: an Uber for "An Uber for" companies!

At one point I found a site claiming to be an Uber for private jets, and they booked seats on private jets that were already flying between your destinations, either empty or not full.

The idea was to defray some the cost of flights that were already happening, and to provide in some cases cheaper than first class flight prices.

I wish I could find that again, I never really looked into if it was actually a decent deal or not.

Over the past 7 or 8 years I've seen multiple companies tried to do this. On paper, the concept makes sense.

But I suspect that if you have the money to pay for a pilot and a private jet you don't really care about making back ~3-5k in flight costs. Especially if it means you have to share your plane with people you don't know and that may not treat your plane with respect.

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