Based in Hingham, Massachusetts, JumpSeat is another new offering in the are of semi-private jet charter having started in March, 2013. Of all the players in the ‘semi-private jet travel’ space, they have placed the most emphasis on the social aspect of the business. The tag line at the top of their website reads “Fly with like minded travelers.” They also include head shots of people with the call to action ‘Fly with Me’. There are various other references to the benefits of travelling with others, including the tagline ‘private community of the air’.
However, the JumpSeat model may make this type of community difficult to establish. Their model is based on the idea of allowing ‘jump seaters’ to take seats on private jets that are already booked. It is as much a service for traditional private jet owners/travelers as it is for the Members–it provides a way for them to defray the cost of flying their jets. In this arrangement, there is bound to be a clear distinction between types of passengers—the ‘owners’ and the ‘guests’, or as JumpSeat calls them, ‘Flyers’ and ‘Buyers’. This system puts the ‘Buyers’ in a second-class category. They can’t specify when they want to fly. They can only check to see if there is a flight available that match their needs, which is not convenient at all.
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A current view of flights available through JumpSeat showed a total of 148 flights scheduled nationwide between July 10 and September 19. That comes out to about two and a half flights per day nationwide. The odds of someone finding a matching flight through this system is very low. They do have an email alert system, but that is going to be a very rare occurrence for most members. The bottom line is that JumpSeat is dealing with the same volume issue that all the other players are dealing with. This business simply won’t work with low volume, as discussed in Operations » Volume.
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Another issue with JumpSeat is that their website suggests that ‘Buyers’ need to purchase the entire remaining inventory of seats rather than just buying a single seat. This probably is not the case, but their console only shows the cost for all seats available on the jet, and the verbiage suggests that you need to purchase all of them.
Assuming that passengers can buy into seats individually, the pricing for JumpSeat is among the most reasonable. The chart below is based on a sampling of the flights listed on the JumpSeat website on July 10, 2013. It shows the average cost per mile at $1.14. This is in the profitable zone, and in the range of what some Social Air Members will pay after accounting for their rewards.
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