In a private jet with Captain Jack

Transcription

1 Flight Sharing In a private jet with Captain Jack Flying in a private jet is not necessarily much more expensive than a business-class ticket. With his flight sharing service Victor, Clive Jackson wants to reduce the cost of flying private. He explained his idea to Handelsblatt online. Düsseldorf/Rotterdam. Actually it s due to Lufthansa that there is now a flight sharing service for private jets, says Clive Jackson. Under normal conditions, it would not have occurred to the founder of Victor to travel in a private jet. But when British company BMI dropped all the flights from Heathrow to Palma de Mallorca, after its takeover by Lufthansa,, the entrepreneur was looking for alternatives. Without hesitation, he chartered a private jet together with some friends in order to get faster to his finca - and was amazed at how cheap flying private can be if one splits the cost. The costs exceeded the price of a business-class ticket only by a few euros. Using the name he started to look for people to share flights and quickly found them. By end of 2010 he extended the portal to being a marketplace for private flights - and changed the name into Victor. The small circle of members has increased tenfold in the past year to now over We meet Clive Jackson in the departure lounge of the private terminal at Düsseldorf Airport, in order to join him on a flight to Rotterdam. He wears an open shirt, light jacket, no tie. He has just arrived from London. When he talks about his company, he snaps his fingers and clenches the fist to emphasize his statements. Jackson is a salesman and summarizes his business model with a simple formula: "We want to reduce the costs of flying on a private jet, make it simpler and more transparent", says Jackson. So far, private jets have been chartered

2 mostly via brokers. A system that is lacking transparency. For example, few brokers would disclose how much they actually pay for an airplane and the commission they add. Using his ipad 'Captain Jack', as he calls himself, explains how his website flyvictor.com works. Via a platform, users can charter aircraft, offer their own aircraft or search for people to share a flight. The operators create a quote, and the user can chose. Everything is thought to be as transparent as possible: the user can request directly the type of aircraft, airline and the price. Victor takes a five percent fee for the mediation. There is no membership fee. Mr Jackson, the airline or jet owners and customers need to get together via your website. That does not sound very flexible... Yet, it is we are extremely flexible in comparison to our competitors in the private jet sector. You can book an available seat up to three hours prior to departure. For a whole jet charter, we need a lead time of about ten hours. That is still more flexible than competitors or a broker. In addition, we reach many airports not served by the major airlines. Flights can be booked on the ipad. "You can rent an A320 with luxury facilities" Do you consider yourself a competitor for commercial airlines? With only 340 jets, your capacity is still significantly smaller than theirs That s the reason why we want to continually expand the number of available seats over the next few years. If you want to travel like Bono or Madonna, you already can charter an A320 with luxury amenities. But we also want to grow in width: our goal is to offer available seats. During the next year, we aim at growing our available fleet to 500 jets. Anyway we can t compete with the big commercial airlines simply because of the fact that we don t have the same number of transactions. Take British Airways: they offer eight daily connections between London and Düsseldorf.

3 Isn t flying private in danger of loosing its air of exclusivity when people fly together? Quite the contrary. People who fly together are very open minded. Mostly they come from different business branches, sometimes, people from the same branch travel together. This is great possibility of establishing interesting conversations or even new business contacts. Anyway, nobody is forced into a conversation on board. Those who are not interested in a conversation or want to work, simply turn away. We have not had any complaints so far. What kind of clients travel with Victor? Initially, we had a strong focus on leisure travel. But now, we find that especially business travellers start to consider us an alternative to business class. We have even some ministers flying with us. There is a change occurring: just like itunes has made the record store on the corner obsolete, we want to turn upside down the private charter business. For this purpose, Jackson has invested his own money. One million euros for a start. "My wife said I was crazy". Recently, he expanded the European business with another 1.5 million euros. The Brit has made his fortune with his own Internet marketing agency Global Beach, which worked, among others, for Bayer and Unilever. In 2007, he founded his second company, Autotorq, an Internet platform for car dealers. Victor is his third company. [At the beginning, Victor focussed on leisure travel.] "We benefit from the economic crisis Founding a company in the middle of an economic crisis, and in addition in the aviation industry which is currently also in crisis quite a risk, isn t it?

4 I can apply much of those things I learned in the automotive industry to the aviation sector. The industry could act much more efficiently - and we offer a marketplace for it. Frankly, the economic crisis currently even is beneficial for us, because many companies are trying to save costs. But I admit: 2009 was a difficult year for private aviation. Especially because travelling private was considered something sumptuous. This is now changing again. Some managers can t renounce to a private jet if they need to safe time. Time is money. And thanks to the direct connections, our customers can save a lot of time. However, currently only a few private jets are being used. 80 percent of all private jets are on the ground, as the experts estimate... That s why we want to encourage private jet owners who rarely use their aircraft to charter it out - and thereby earn money. Even if an aircraft is being used for charter, there are many empty legs. We also want to help selling them and reduce the costs. Why did you choose precisely Europe as the main market in? Here is where the aviation industry is especially suffering... Since our foundation we aim at setting up Victor internationally. However, our growth must be carried out at a reasonable pace. In 2013, we want to invest another six million pounds (approximately 7.4 million euros), in order to grow internationally. We see an amazing potential especially in Asia. Before long, the Chinese market could be as important as the U.S. market in terms of private aviation. And this market is already six times larger than Europe. But also Germany is an important market for us. But so far, you are still having losses with Victor... Yes, but in 2014, we want to reach the break-even point. I am very optimistic that this is going to work. In order to get to black numbers, we need approximately 500 members who use Victor regularly. This is not an unrealistic target. [The Piaggio P180 Avanti at Düsseldorf Airport]

5 From Düsseldorf to Rotterdam in 27 minutes During the interview, Jackson looks at his iphone. Our flight to Rotterdam is slightly delayed. Jackson sends a SMS to JetNetherlands, a small Dutch airline that will fly us today. "Thanks to the direct contact with the airline, it s much easier to plan your flights individually ", he says. In a usual case, his customers have full control about when they want to take off and only need to be at the airport half an hour before departure. When our plane arrives, everything happens very quickly. The pilot picks us up at the lounge and welcomes us personally, then we pass the security check of the private terminal. No queues. Notebooks may remain in the bag. We only must take off the belt. Less than five minutes later, we are sitting in the bright leather seats. We fly in an Piaggio P180 Avanti operated by JetNetherlands. And Avanti is to be understood literally. With its top speed of 700 km/h, the Italian design aircraft is one of the world s fastest turboprop aircraft. There is capacity for seven passengers. The Dutch co-pilot takes care of the safety instruction. Jackson engages him in a short technical discussion. "Outside, the aircraft is very noisy," the co-pilot explains, while inside, you only notice little. Then, the propellers power up, and the Piaggio ascends steeply into the sky over Düsseldorf. "Look," Jackson says after the start, "the Rhine." The co-pilot asks if we want to have a look at the cockpit. Some of the strict antiterrorism legislation for scheduled flights don t apply in private jets. You hear every now and then that smaller operators, in order to save costs, rely on pilots without the necessary air transportation license. Do your passengers need to worry about their security? Of course not. The regulations in the aviation industry are stricter than in any other branch, just think about the banks. Our partners must adhere to the requirements of their home country and are continuously monitored. In case we received a notification of the surveillance authorities, which could make us doubt about a partner s security, we would immediately remove him from our operators list. Only 20 minutes after we started near the Rhine, we see the glimmer of Rotterdam s greenhouses beneath us. En total, the trip from one airport to the other took us less than half an hour. Upon arrival, there s a car waiting for us in order to take the travellers to their final destination. Jackson says goodbye and heads towards his next appointment. Victor's success has a downside, at least for him: he only manages to visit his finca in Mallorca twice a year.