Story ID: 100
Jet Linx Introduces New Flightsharing Feature
By: Curt Epstein
Caption: Part of the company's new mobile application, it will allow aircraft owners and jet card members the ability to sell empty seats on a per-flight basis.
Word Count: 391
Jet management and card membership provider Jet Linx has introduced a new empty-seat marketing program as part of its revised mobile application. Called OpenSeat Exchange, it offers the company’s jet owners and members the ability to buy or sell empty seats on its flights to other Jet Linx aircraft owners or members on a per-seat basis, exclusively through the app, which allows users to search for specific city-pairs and dates.
The company's 2,000 jet-card members and 115 aircraft owner clients can use the new app "to further improve, enrich, and elevate the Jet Linx private jet travel experience,” said Jamie Walker, president of the Nebraska-based company, adding that last year there were more than 40,000 empty seats on Jet Linx flights. “Open Seat Exchange is a solution that gives our clients the ability to buy and sell these empty seats on a per-flight, per-seat basis. It’s a secure, trusted, peer-to-peer exchange of open seats within the Jet Linx community.”
Walker noted that the company had been working on a flight-sharing model for more than a decade. This solution required it to get a Part 380 exemption under existing Department of Transportation regulations. If the initial flight booker chooses to share their flight, seat availability ends 24 hours before the scheduled departure. No money changes hands between the booker and the customer who buys the empty seats as the payment is handled internally, with the seller getting a pro-rated credit for the value of the seat from Jet Linx, while the buyer is charged the per-seat price plus administrative fees. 
"We're not trying to open this up to a larger audience; it's just an opportunity that we are giving them within the membership group," Walker told AIN. "In surveying our clients before we did this, provided it was that peer-to-peer exchange, we saw 80 percent of our clients would happily offset their costs and share some of those seats."
The flight-sharing program is the latest feature to be added to the app, which gives users the ability to book private jets in real time at guaranteed hourly rates, quote future trips, arrange catering and ground transport, make changes to the flight manifest, and view and book empty legs at discounted pricing, as well as receive company news and updates.
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