Silicon Valley tech company Stellar Labs has launched a complete digital marketplace for the private jet market that aims to increase the number of people using private aviation and bring improved margins to operators.
The commercial operations system, which has been launched in the USA and will be available in Europe later this year, fully automates quoting, streamlines the proposal/booking process and securely moves funds through an electronic payments network.
Operators will also have access to real-time revenue management, dynamic scheduling and advanced analytics, making the entire private jet charter process paperless from end-to-end.
“Business aviation operates like a pre-internet industry,” said Paul Touw, CEO of Stellar Labs. “Operators typically have to make 20 proposals for each booked charter trip and each booked trip can require hundreds of emails to complete. Much of the data is input and stored manually, increasing the chances of making mistakes but also adding to the overall cost.
“In addition, up to 35% of private aviation flights have no one on them, but with our technology this could be potentially reduced to 15% using our floating fleet optimization. We estimate that these levels of inefficiency mean that the actual cost of a flight only accounts for around 60% of the purchase price and this is restricting growth in the industry.”
According to the company, the global business aviation market is slowing and to address this the industry must move online to maximize operator profits and increase the number of people using private aviation. “We want to have the same impact on the private aviation sector that the likes of Sabre, Priceline, Uber, Airbnb and others had on transportation and hospitality,” said Touw.