By Lisa Gordon | March 2, 2015 Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 13 seconds.
Toronto-based Chartright Air Group reports it has been selling more empty legs and attracting new customers since it signed on with FlyEasy. Eric Dumigan Photo
According to an article on the Forbes magazine website, about 40 per cent of all private jet flights are empty legs—that is, trips where the crew has dropped off passengers at their destination and must now reposition the aircraft to another location.
For Shaan Bhanji, that simple truth of business aviation led him to investigate how technology could be harnessed to fill some of those empty seats with paying passengers—thereby helping private charter operators increase their bottom line profits.
“I worked at Bombardier Aerospace in the Global Business Aircraft division,” explained Bhanji. “I was working with NetJets and I had a chance to connect with them and understand their operations. One of the things about them is they do a lot of repositioning. As a result, there are a lot of flights flying empty. I had the idea to implement advanced technology to solve some of the issues with empty legs.”
Bhanji left Bombardier to do his MBA; following that, he looked into a couple of different business ideas before partnering with software developer Konstantin Filatov to launch FlyEasy Corp. in June 2014. The initial business concept involved operating a web-based empty leg marketplace, a searchable database that connected customers with operators who had empty legs to sell.
“We had designed a system where air operators and brokers could list their empty legs, and customers could come on, search a particular trip and find those empty legs—just like an Expedia of private aviation,” Bhanji told Skies. “Since then, we’ve been putting a lot of effort into developing our technology to solve common problems for private air operators.”
Less than a year after it was founded, Toronto-based FlyEasy has signed on 15 charter operators from across North America. All together, there are more than 100 aircraft available in the system. The company’s services have expanded, too.
For a monthly fee, private aviation operators can take advantage of FlyEasy’s full range of services, including accurate online charter quoting, charter inquiries, empty leg alerts, fleet and inventory management tools, and the FlyEasy Network. Bhanji likens this last service to “the LinkedIn of private aviation,” where members can connect and see other operators’ fleets and pricing.
“The FlyEasy Network has public profile pages for all our air operators,” he said. “You will be able to see their fleet and request trips; if you’re a member, you can connect with them and pull up their aircraft and check pricing. You can include their empty legs in the emails to your customers, so you can do some sub-charter business, too.”
Chartright Air Group, headquartered at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, signed on with FlyEasy last November. The company has noted a marked increase in empty legs sold since implementing the service.
“Empty legs are a huge inefficiency in the industry,” noted David Shaver, Chartright’s director of business development. “FlyEasy is helping us combat that inefficiency.”
He said the modern, easy-to-use service offers Chartright clients the ability to sign up for specific empty leg alerts, allowing them to target only the information they need. Behind the scenes, Chartright staff can upload empty leg information quickly and easily, with emails auto-generated for subscribers.
As well, the quoting tool delivers accurate price estimates for all aircraft in the Chartright fleet in just seconds. “This, combined with the empty leg tab displayed on our website, has been excellent for lead generation. We have people searching for trips and signing up for empty legs on a daily basis,” concluded Shaver.
FlyEasy is working with the Canadian Business Aviation Association to provide technology solutions for Canadian charter operators. As well, the company’s software is now integrated with the National Business Aviation Association’s Air Mail forum.
Bhanji said FlyEasy’s end-to-end services are all about supporting a more efficient workflow. With a low price point, he added, the company delivers “an end-to-end solution for everything private aviation.”
