Seat sharing is the promise that if you can afford to fly on commercial airlines, even low fare airlines like Southwest Airlines, you can get a taste of the private jet experience. Starting at just over a hundred bucks and ranging to a few thousand dollars per month to fly as much as you want, these semiprivate airlines fly on published schedules, although sometimes only a month in advance. They don’t sell you the entire aircraft as you get with on-demand charter or jet cards, which costs thousands of dollars an hour. You get a seat or however many seats you buy or your membership entitles you to, and like a regular airline flight, you’ll sit with people you don’t know.
The flights operate on jets and turboprops, some configured as corporate shuttles, some actual private jets, but when they are full, they aren’t roomier than a domestic first class seat. The big benefit is using private jet terminals - FBOs in aviation speak - meaning you show up 10 or 15 minutes before your flight. On the other end, you are generally out of the airport in five or 10 minutes. Gone are the long walks from car rental return or parking lot, or even just the curb. There are no winding check-in or security lines. You won't have to take the train to Concourse Z. Smaller airports are close to where you are coming from or going. There's less time sitting in line behind 28 other flights waiting to get to the runway. It means for flights under two hours you can cut total travel by more than half.
If it sounds too good to be true, it may be. A number of companies that have tried to make a go out of the model have ceased operations or been acquired. Yet Sudhin Shahani, CEO of Surf Air, one of the most prominent names in the current crop, says a number of new semiprivate airlines are in the offing, which has caused him to change his five-year-old company’s direction. More on that in a bit.
In breaking news, OneJet, which focuses on connecting medium-size markets, is expected to announce the acquisition of Ultimate Jet Charters later today. Ultimate Jet Charters operates 30-seat Dornier and ERJ aircraft for corporate shuttle clients, as well as per-seat scheduled service on select routes under the Ultimate Air Shuttle brand. It’s the second merger in this relatively small space in less than a year. In 2017 Surf Air bought RISE, a similar membership styled operator in Texas.
But it’s not just the M&A space that is buzzing. Last week JetSuiteX announced it will start today code sharing. JetBlue will place its "B6" airline code on JetSuiteX operated flights between West Coast destinations, offering new point-to-point routes for JetBlue customers. This includes flights between Burbank, Concord, Oakland and Las Vegas, marking the first codeshare between a semiprivate public charter operator and a major national carrier.
Earlier this year JetSuiteX and JetSmarter struck a deal allowing JetSmarter members to buy discounted seats on JetSuiteX in addition to the semiprivate shuttles the Florida based seller of private travel memberships already runs. The partnership was interesting in that JetSmarter, already had an alliance with XOJET, a charter broker and operator that sells jet cards and to some degree competes with JetSuite in the big boy segment. It also marked the first time two of these semiprivate airlines had partnered each other, although that didn’t last long.
Surf Air also was also busy last week. It turns out its ballyhooed European expansion two years in the making won’t come with its own fleet. Instead, it will be a partnership with JetClass, a Vienna-based broker, that sells seats on small private jets it charters connecting a number of European cities. Surf Air is putting on hiatus its own Zurich-London flights, started just last September with its own Embraer Phenom 300, but operated by Flexjet's European subsidiary.
During an interview with Forbes.com, Shahani said Surf Air also recently contracted out operations of the former RISE aircraft in Texas to Tradewind Aviation, an operator, which sells semiprivate flights in the Northeastern U.S. and Caribbean. Last November Surf Air quietly outsourced its operations in California to Encompass Aviation transferring its aircraft and pilots to the third party. There were no press releases on either move, although in mid-April, Surf Air trumpeted a partnership with BLADE for the summer, giving its members access to various helicopter shuttles.
Shahani says that many of his members are concentrated in California and Texas and spend time on the East Coast during the summer and will now be able to take advantage of the alliance. It's the same thing when they go to Europe, they can book flights on JetClass as part of their membership.
Surf Air’s new global membership will start at $3,950 per month and include all US and European routes, including those routes expanded with the partnership between Blade and JetClass. Surf Air’s Premium Membership, currently at $2,950 per month, will now have added value with national access to California, Texas and Blade’s East Coast routes. The caveat is access to partner flights may have usage caps based.
Since Surf Air has turned itself from an operator of aircraft to a pure seller of memberships, it then took a seemingly left turn later last week when it announced a new blockchain based travel loyalty program. Shahani says Voy addresses a deficit for most travel businesses, the fact that they are not large enough to afford to build and manage their own points-based loyalty programs. Developed as a solution to the internal demand from Surf Air’s members’ need and desire for a rewards program, Voy will provide a loyalty platform for travel companies of all sizes including hotels, restaurants, car rentals, airport lounges that will all be able to access a global network of travelers.
In terms of who its new semiprivate aviation partners will be, Shahani wouldn't speculate, however, Clipper Jet is hoping to finally get its transcontinental concept off the ground while Air Chicago wants to prove a model that enables Windy City travelers to make same-day semiprivate trips while eschewing the hassles of those big, bad airports. Meanwhile, Surf Air still has an order for 65 single-engine Pilatus PC-12 turboprops and while it won’t operate them, the CEO is not opposed to owning the planes, although the new direction is clearly tilted towards striking alliances with other semiprivate operators and signing partners for Voy. For JetSuite, which just secured a significant investment from Qatar Airways, its plan for JetSuiteX is to continue to grow its own fleet adding six to 12 aircraft per year for the foreseeable future. Blade recently said it had raised $38 million and now operates on both coasts. But if recent weeks are any indication, what’s far from sure is what the landscape will look like a year or two from now.
