Private jet charters now available on demand

Jan 15 , 2017

A Victor jet landed on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Charters can be booked with just one click and travellers pay a fraction of the price it would be to take the whole plane

Private planes and jets used to be for billionaires and celebrities. The skies were filled with Louis Vuitton trunks and plenty of businessmen setting their own agendas for where and when to send those wheels up. However, in the last few years things have changed – although private jetting is still utterly niche – and a whole new market has opened up, where tech is leading the charge. The traditional model of private aviation needed to be disrupted – and fliers are rejoicing.

Today, you can go on your iPhone and 20 minutes later hop on a charter flight for a fraction of the price it would be to take the whole plane – you can basically Uber pool and see what’s available to your chosen destination.

One such company is Victor with its “on-demand” charter with technology strengthening its offering – calling it a fusion of hi-tech and hi-touch customer service. “We are enabling customers to book quickly via web or app and without a broker – the traditional charter has relied on opaque brokers, who keep operator apart from customer and don’t always provide clear info around pricing, margin or specific aircraft,” explains Clive Jackson, CEO and founder of Victor. “As our new data shows, more and more customers are benefitting from the wide range of charter options that we offer and trusting in the clear, easy to understand way we present them.”

Jackson adds that consumers are fond of this new “sharing economy” which we live in now, because regardless of socio-economic standing, time is the world’s most precious commodity.

He says that on-demand businesses operating in the sharing economy have a vital role to play in helping people make their lives more efficient within a congested environment where time delays happen regularly. This collaboration of on-demand services within a sharing economy is prompting every industry to evolve to provide more and more consumers with what they need, when they need it.

Victor was the first company to disclose aircraft and crew specifics, side-by-side comparisons of thousands of jets at 40,000 airports worldwide and instant estimate pricing. In the latest Sunday Times Tech Track 100 (which came out a month ago) showing the UK’s fastest growing private tech companies, Victor came 20th with a sales growth of 139 per cent. Apparently flexibility, cost effectiveness and time efficiency in travel are the buzzwords for a 21st century life. But they are not alone.

The luxurious interior of Victor’s Hawker 800XPi

And so, in the last five years many other apps have launched (and shuttered) presenting similar offerings, such as JetSuite and Surf Air – some are even trying subscription-based models. The need, obviously, just seems to be growing. With security lanes becoming longer, airports becoming more unmanageable and the constant headache delays that have become part of flying – well those in the know (and with the right means) can now avoid all of those nightmares.