The Social Jetwork

摘要

SOMEONE HAS FINALLY figured out how to bring the social media revolution to flight. Customers of upstart charter broker Social Flights can log on to sodalflights.com, find people in their area who want to go to the same sports event or rock concert, for instance, and join them in chartering a jet. Social Flights matches Travel Tribes—for example, conference attendees and corporate executives going the same way—with empty aircraft that business jet operators are looking to fill. "These planes fly empty 40 percent of the time as they drop off their passengers," says Social Flights chief innovation officer Dan Robles. "The objective is to get an eight-passenger plane to be shared by 16 people. People fly down, and at the destination they pick up eight people to fly back." Pulling that off, says Robles, results in a 40 percent drop in ticket prices for everyone.