Charter CRSs Take Flight – Dot.coms Meet Aviation

Two new computer reservations systems – Skydini and Virgin Charter – promising to significantly expedite and streamline the booking process, took flight during the National Business Aircraft Association meeting in Atlanta last week. The new CRSs promise to change the landscape for charter services just as they did during the 1980s and late 1990s for the airlines. Skidini claims to be the first real-time Internet booking tool while Virgin Charter, actually launched last June, contends it is the eBay of the charter market. Of course, they are not the only games in town and AviationToday’s VLJ Report will provide an in-depth analysis of this emerging industry in an upcoming issue.

Skydini
"Our goal is to revolutionize the private charter booking business. We've designed Skydini.com to be the fastest, most comprehensive booking tool out there," said Sonny Belew, co-founder of Skydini. "Unlike other online booking services, Skydini.com instantly connects private air charter providers and their customers, bringing the current 24-hour booking process down to just three to five minutes."
Skydini.com not only simplifies actual flight selection, but will also secure confirmation, payment and paperwork, saving hours each day for charter company schedulers and dispatchers, executive and personal assistants, brokers, travel agents and concierge services. It features 24/7 access to a searchable database of pre-screened, FAA-certified charter jets, all available for instant booking to help charter customers escape the time-consuming hassles of current booking systems.
In a survey of 199 charter owners and dispatchers and 250 corporate travel planners and executive assistants conducted by the Ketchum Global Research Network and Braun Research on behalf of Skydini, the majority of charter companies handle all details of flight booking, scheduling and coordinating in-house. Charter company owners and dispatchers say that securing passenger details, contracts and payments top the list of booking headaches. The survey also revealed that the streamlined FAA requirements and real-time availability are the most valuable attributes of an online scheduling concept.
The direct connection to consumers that Skydini provides will enable operators to continue to profit from this growing $5-billion-a-year industry, said the company. In fact, three-quarters of charter company owners and dispatchers surveyed say increased revenue is a primary benefit of Skydini's one-stop comparison shop. More than 7,000 charter flights originate in the U.S. each day and the FAA expects private jet flight hours to triple over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, flights fly empty 40 percent of the time. Skydini's unique system facilitates the booking of supplemental round-trips to reduce the number of empty legs.
"Skydini offers a savings opportunity to the private charter industry as a whole," said co-Founder Janet Fenner. "Customers won't have to shop around or play the waiting game in order to secure their ideal flight. With Skydini, charter providers won't have to handle anything but the flight itself."
Skydini.com will go live for consumers to begin booking charter flights in early December 2007, once charter operator background checks have been completed and charter operators upload available aircraft.

Virgin Charter
In a presentation that felt more like a live infomercial selling Oxy-Clean than a NBAA event, Virgin Charter introduced itself last week explaining its eBay-like charter auction service.
Virgin Charter follows the certification of the Virgin Group’s new, low-cost, U.S. airline. The company is a full-service marketplace that brings together buyers who want to book private air travel with safety-rated charter operators. It hopes to eliminate the uncertainty and hassles in booking charter flights.
Seller inventories are made available on line without changing the charter business model. Passengers end up managing their entire trip on line instead of calling each charter company, finding availability, negotiating a price and then booking. Virgin Charter does not own or operate aircraft, and it does not act as a broker.
The service targets high-end charter clients by allowing passengers to search its computer reservation system for aircraft going their way as long as they originate in the U.S. In a twist on the Priceline model, charter companies bid on the passenger’s trips combining it with the eBay model. Operators then give Virgin Charter a cut. With Virgin Charter, the bids will be available to everyone – competition and passengers alike.
In addition to addressing booking hassles, Virgin Charter is tackling safety, encouraging aircraft owners and operators to get a third-party safety audit, the results of which will be on its site. The CharterX partnership includes such safety audits by its subsidiary Wyvern Consulting. Indeed, Teal Group’s Richard Aboulafia predicted that only vljs with a proven safety track record such as the Embraer Phenom and Cessna Mustang would get the nod once corporate travel departments begin considering charter travel for executives.
Virgin Charter, based in Santa Monica, Calif., created a full-service online marketplace where safety-rated charter aviation operators meet private aviation customers. Other contractors include ExpressJet and XOJets. CharterX is also partnering with the new service.
The listings include buyer ratings and operator safety audits available to consumers before booking a flight. Adapting the service to the social networking model, the commentaries go both ways, however, with charter companies posting comments about passengers and vice versa.
The Virgin Charter team is led by founder and CEO Scott Duffy, a seasoned Internet executive and private aviation veteran who served as a managing director for one of the largest charter brokers of private aircraft in the world. Duffy, who was looking for funding for his eBay charter booking scheme, was approached by Virgin USA, which was developing a similar service, and offered its marketing might needed to get the business off the ground as well as more investment than Duffy could have ever expected remaining on his own. In addition to Duffy, The team also includes technology and aviation executives from Google, Expedia, eBay and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Said Duffy, "Virgin Charter's centralized marketplace will revolutionize private aviation by providing tremendous efficiencies to what has been a highly fragmented industry."