Story ID: 101
GA Proponents OpenAirplane and FlyOtto Closing
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: OpenAirplane and FlyOtto, startups designed to simplify access to general aviation and generate more flying activity, closed on December 23.
Word Count: 1421
Two companies—OpenAirplane and FlyOtto–that were designed to simplify general aviation (GA) aircraft rental and charter booking ceased operating in late December. The companies were founded by Rod Rakic and Adam Fast, with OpenAirplane launching in 2013, followed by FlyOtto in late 2016.

OpenAirplane solved the perennial GA problem, where pilots who fly rental aircraft avoid doing so because of the onerous checkout requirements at rental outlets. With OpenAirplane, pilots could qualify to rent from any member company after completing a universal checkout. The system allowed pilots to rent the same aircraft model at participating rental firms, anywhere in the U.S., simply by scheduling via the OpenAirplane website, showing up at the agreed time, and showing identification documentation. No further in-aircraft flight check was required. OpenAirplane cost nothing for pilots; rental outfits paid a small percentage of the rental to OpenAirplane.

FlyOtto was a unique transparent charter marketplace that sought to change the way brokers vie to sell a trip to a client at the lowest possible cost. FlyOtto was free to charter clients and for operators to join, and once a trip was confirmed, the operator would pay a fee to FlyOtto. The FlyOtto website was simple and easy to understand, with no membership, and all a client had to do was fill out the departure and destination locations to get a list of available trips.

OpenAirplane was designed to help pilots fly more, by having access to a fleet of 457 aircraft at 109 operators in 30 states without needing a checkout flight for each new rental location. For a pilot who couldn’t access the airplane they normally fly, OpenAirplane offered a simple alternative. Of the 19,000 pilots who signed up with OpenAirplane, 67 percent lived within a reasonable distance of the nearest OpenAirplane operator, according to Rakic. For pilots who travel and want to rent an airplane near the destination, OpenAirplane provided an attractive option.

Unfortunately, Rakic lamented, “There weren’t enough people like me who wanted to use the service. People definitely liked the idea. The disconnect was not in the service,” he said. “It ended up being the volume of utilization was not sustainable. It’s hard to get pilots off the couch into the cockpit. If we were able to monetize good vibes, it would have been sustainable.”

FlyOtto likewise didn’t reach the volume of business needed to continue and prosper. Rakic and Fast didn’t just rely on revenue from OpenAirplane and FlyOtto but intended for both to grow much larger. “We bootstrapped it for three years,” Rakic said, but they realized they would need more funding to launch FlyOtto. In 2015 they raised a seed round of $500,000, then those investors came back for a bridge round of $800,000 in 2017. “We couldn’t have done it without them,” Rakic said gratefully.

All of the money, including funds from some surveys conducted for large aviation companies, kept the lights on, he said, “but eventually we got to the point—am I tilting at windmills?” His company spent two years trying to raise additional money in a Series A fundraising, pitching it to investors in New York, Dubai, and San Francisco, with a solid plan for customer acquisition costs and driving growth. “But there is just a point where you run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas,” he said.

Rakic remains puzzled about the lack of interest on both the financial and demand side of the business, especially FlyOtto, given the investment of $10 million by Airbus in its Blade charter brokerage and charter broker BlackBird’s raising of $10 million from venture capitalists. (BlackBird also offered a low-cost, Part 91 non-charter option to its customers, which likely competed with certified charter operators.)

When it came time to make the difficult decision to shut down OpenAirplane and FlyOtto, Rakic was prepared. In the email to customers explaining why the company was shutting down, Rakic wrote: “From the beginning, we designed OpenAirplane to be failsafe. This timing will give us time to process payments, and provide for the orderly shutdown of the platform. We’ve always done our best to ensure vendors got paid before we did. We built that into our system from day one. We’re taking care to protect everyone’s data, just as we have since we started back in 2012.”

“We’re not going bankrupt,” he told AIN, “and not leaving anyone holding the bag.” He didn’t want to be the proprietor of yet another aviation company that left a bad taste in customers’ mouths. “There are so many tales of woe how people were screwed by aviation companies when they closed suddenly.”

Although, Rakic, said, “I’m deeply sad that the ride is ending,” he remains proud of having “built something that people cared about. I truly wish we could have kept doing it.” Since the shutdown announcement, “there has just been an outpouring of love and support and appreciation. A lot of folks had their bucket list experience in aviation enabled by this.”

Happy Flier

One frequent customer who greatly appreciated OpenAirplane is Christian Calcedo, a Boeing 777 captain based in the Middle East. “For me, aviation is not my job, it is my passion. It is my entire life,” he told AIN.

Calcedo used to live in Florida and fly Cessna 172s in his spare time, but after moving to Dubai, “I quickly realized that general aviation is non-existent here. In some places, you still have a little bit of general aviation, but it is either way too expensive or it is very restrictive—or with really inadequate or insufficient facilities. Sometimes I believe that pilots in the U.S. do not realize how blessed they are, by having the quality and health of general aviation that they have there.”

For three years after moving to the Middle East, he wasn’t able to fly light airplanes but kept his interest alive by reading magazines and listening to aviation podcasts. One day, he heard on a podcast about OpenAirplane and how he could rent Cessna 172s almost anywhere in the U.S. with just one annual check flight. “I was super excited,” he told AIN. “That was exactly what I had been waiting for; it was perfect for my situation.” Calcedo flies to the U.S. seven or eight times per year, staying from 24 to 48 hours. “The chance to have a nearby place to rent a C-172 pretty much anywhere in U.S., without the hassle of rental checkouts and all that, is just perfect for someone in my situation.”

He joined OpenAirplane in 2014 and has flown in the network about 100 hours. “I reserve several days in advance online. I receive my confirmation online. I read and study the local rules from the OpenAirplane website and I prepare myself as best as I can, gathering all the information available. On the day of the flight I show up at the FBO, they give me the keys to the airplane, I go out, do my preflight and go flying...as simple as that...it is brilliant.”

Thanks to OpenAirplane, Calcedo has expanded his general aviation horizons and completed many flights he otherwise would not have been able to enjoy if he had to do a checkout flight every time.

“I have many, many memories that will live with me from those flights, like when, with my wife, we flew from Long Beach to Burbank [California] to pick up a friend and flew to Big Bear for a great $100 hamburger at the airport restaurant. Or when I flew with another pilot who joined me from Chicago; along the shoreline and to Oshkosh, again for an awesome $100 hamburger. Yet another one was flying with two cabin crew friends [through] the famous [New York City] Hudson River corridor and then to Martha's Vineyard for lunch. Another time was flying with my family to Cape Canaveral; we even had the chance to fly over the landing Shuttle runway. Maybe the best one when I was with my son flying to SPG [St. Petersburg, Florida] for the $100 lunch at the airport. We met astronaut Nicole Stott there. So many amazing memories and adventures…

“It is with great sadness that I read the news about OpenAirplane closing, and now what is left for me? I guess, more years without flying general aviation...very sad indeed.”
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