Social Air is well positioned to compete for dominance in the emerging and wide open ‘semi-private jet charter’ market by pulling Members from both the commercial airlines and private jet charter markets.
Semi-Private Jet Travel
We have identified five businesses that are currently trying to tap into and define the ‘semi-private jet travel’. The relative strengths and weaknesses of these ventures are covered separately:
What they all have in common is that that they are all basically new businesses, the oldest one being just over a year old. They are also all currently operating at very low volume. They all have somewhere in the neighborhood of a couple hundred members. As discussed in Operations » Volume, this business requires roughly 15,000 members in order to provide enough flights to be convenient to users. None of the current players are even close to that amount and they don’t seem to be growing at a pace that will put them at that level in the near future.
It isn’t clear what the various companies are doing to promote their businesses currently. One channel that is glaringly absent from their marketing mix is pay per click advertising on Google. Dozens of private jet companies spend a combined $1.5 million per month on Google Adwords and have been doing so for years, indicating that this is an effective marketing channel. But none of the above sites has a presence there. This will be one of the key channels for Social Air to promote, and could be a key competitive advantage.
Other than simply developing a more robust lead generation system, Social Air will distinguish itself from it’s competitors by placing more emphasis on the Social aspect of the business—both in terms of focusing on the benefits of traveling with other Members, but in terms of getting Members to be the primary marketing source via their social networks.
Commercial Airlines
It isn’t clear how many of the semi-private jet travel market will be pulled from people who typically fly first-class on commercial airlines or from people who normally fly private. But either way there are clear advantages to flying with Social Air.
In terms of commercial, the price for flying on Social Air will be significantly more expensive. But once we have achieve a critical mass of Members, the service will be vastly superior. First, the promise of time savings can actually become real at high enough volume. The convenience, ease and luxury of the flights will, of course, make them an entirely different experience. And the kicker is the extra benefit of networking and making friends in flight and being part of a real, exclusive membership club. For people with high enough income to consider the option, the benefits stack of very well against the added cost.
Private Jet Charter
People who step down from full private jet charter may be a harder sell. They are already used to the privacy, and that privacy is considered to be the primary benefit of their service. If they have already been flying private, money is not as much of an object for these people. Once class of private jet flyer that may be more accessible are the jet card purchasers. They are not as committed to private flight, and are obviously making some concessions on price, since they are not going for full ownership. For some of these people the privacy feature may not be enough to justify the four to ten times price differential between Social Air and private, especially when viewed in the light of the great benefits of social flight.