The internet spawned another air taxi reservation system in the guise of Flyacab.com. The search service is designed to make it easy for potential air taxi customers to find charter aircraft and their operators by providing a way for registered buyers and sellers to directly interact with each other, said the company.
Flyacab said it is capitalizing on the recent innovation in small aircraft which has led to a new generation of cleaner, greener small planes, equipped with the latest avionics and safety gear. These innovations are driving a ten-fold expansion in locations served by modern air taxi services.
“Air-taxi's don't yet have information distribution standards, so booking a charter aircraft online today can't be done with the same ease as buying an airline ticket,” said the company. “Flyacab tries to address some elements of this problem by allowing prospective travelers the ability to directly compare different charter aircraft. The search feature provides a value based listing of available aircraft to any web user. The value analysis is based on Flyacab's proprietary algorithm and is presented to user's as the ‘Flyacab Sort Order.’ This approach makes it easy for customers to get instant information on possible choices with a high degree of transparency. Registered users are given access to their own private web page where they can manage the process of requesting and receiving quotes for multiple trips.”
The company explained users input cities and the airports between which they want to travel and are presented with a set of aircraft in order of value as calculated by Flyacab's sort algorithm. Registered users for the free service can see contact information of listed air taxi operators. Members can use that information to contact the aircraft operator immediately.
The quote-request feature allows user's to request quotes for one or more aircraft. Users can view these planned trips/requests at anytime by logging into their free Flyacab account. When users make quote-requests they can tell Flyacab to keep their contact information confidential.
Registering on Flyacab.com as an aircraft operator is also free for all FAA-approved charter operators. Registered aircraft operators can respond to customers by providing quotes online. Customers are immediately notified of new quotes via email and can view quote details and comparisons by logging on to their Flyacab account.
When users want to get more information on a quote, they can select an option which allows only that specific aircraft operator to view their contact details. At this point users can ask the operator to contact them on a specific phone number or email address. Beyond this point customers and aircraft operators transact on their own since Flyacab does not yet provide flight bookings.
Flyacab's platform also enables advertisers to focus their message down to a specific pair of cities by sponsoring search results only for a city pair that matches the advertisers' interest. This allows advertisers to customize their target segment and display their messages only to customers seeking to fly specific routes, which increases the value of a page-view or click-thru to the advertiser.