Markets are basically the cities that people want to fly to and from. There are 35 markets in the U.S. with populations of 500,000 or more. The top 100 markets include cities with populations of approximately 200,000 and higher. 3
It will be important to determine which markets Social Air will serve as it expands. Because Social Air depends on people sharing aircraft, it is important that Members are based in markets that have a critical mass of other Members so there is a good chance there will be someone who wants to fly from and to the same locations. If there are too many markets available, Member trip requests will be spread out over a wider range of locations. And the expansion is logarithmic, since we are trying to match both departure and arrival airports. Social Air will begin by serving only major metropolitan markets and expand to additional markets only as Membership levels warrant.
Each market generally supports multiple airports. For example, Los Angeles has 21 airports with control towers. 4 Markets are associated with corresponding airports within the Social Air system so if Members make requests for specific airports and there are no other requests for that airport in a similar time frame, the system can expand the search to match on the market rather than the airport.