Tapping into the market for empty-leg charter trips and consumer demand for lower-cost flights, FlyJets aims to connect charter operators with its more than 27,000 users while helping charter operators fill seats and airplanes profitably that otherwise would go empty. “There are a lot more people who want buy a single space at $3,000 instead of pay full price to go from Florida to New York,” said FlyJets founder and CEO Jessica Fisher.
Charter operators can sign up with FlyJets and upload any or all of their aircraft. “We know where the airplane is,” she said. “We tap into their scheduler [computer system] and our algorithm can read [information] based on where the aircraft is.” FlyJets doesn’t just offer to fill an empty leg for a traditional out-and-back charter but also offers the operator the opportunity to sell a flight in a further 200-mile radius.
The FlyJets system automatically ensures that the aircraft is within that range, whether it needs downtime for maintenance, and sets the minimum hourly rate that the operator is willing to accept. “The operator can change this anytime,” Fisher said. “We can allow our algorithm to make a schedule. The script looks at the available aircraft and updates every five minutes, finds the availability, and sells it to customers.”
Fisher came up with the idea for FlyJets as a business school project, then incorporated the company in 2018 and began beta testing in 2021. All of the technology behind the FlyJets system was developed in-house, she said.
“The thesis I had was, 'I don’t want to be a taker of existing empty legs.' I saw an opportunity to do something super unique and create utility.” She calls this concept “empty leg splits,” where a charter operator can sell discounted legs to FlyJets members but still generate more revenue for the entire trip. “This is the simplest way to solve what I see as a major utilization challenge in the business jet [charter] industry,” she said.
FlyJets' website offers those who sign up (accounts are free) the opportunity not only to make a firm booking for a flight but also, under the recently launched FlyJets+ marketplace, to bid on flights that haven’t yet been scheduled. In other words, customers can create demand that participating operators can fulfill. “If we have enough flyer volume and aircraft, we could be creating matchups every day,” Fisher said. FlyJets customers can also purchase emissions offsets using its FlyGreen calculator.
To further explain how FlyJets works, Fisher cited an example where a charter operator offers a trip at $35,000 for a one-way flight, but the operator needs the airplane back at its home base. She pointed out that the customer is paying for a round-trip flight, even though they are only traveling to the destination. The operator thus has available the return flight, which it can sell on the open market for 50% to 60% of the $35,000 price of the original charter. The net revenue for the whole trip thus would be $52,000 to $56,000, if the return trip can be sold.
FlyJets members can save money by requesting an empty leg, which Fisher calls creating “phantom” empty legs before the trip, and if another member requests the opposing trip, each pays less—an average of 40%—than it would have cost for the $35,000 round trip. The operator still gains more revenue, $42,000 for the roundtrip, while FlyJets members enjoy the discount (paying $21,000 for each leg). This eliminates “between $10,500.00 and $14,000.00 of ‘financial waste,’” according to Fisher.
“We’re here to assist both flyers and operators in terms of increasing efficiency, eliminating waste, decreasing costs for end-user flyers, and simultaneously increasing utilization rates—and therefore total revenue—for aircraft providers,” Fisher said.