Empty Promises For Cheap Empty Leg Private Jet Flights

20.01.2024 - 00:25 / forbes.com

There is much to be wary of when choosing private jet flight providers. Failures with both fractional operators, such as Jet It and jet card providers, such as JetSuite, cost customers tens of millions of dollars in cumulative losses. In both cases, it was likely a stew of growth plans that were too ambitious, flaws in their business models, external issues with their suppliers, and just bad timing. More recently, in the case of AeroVanti, there are lawsuits, allegations of fraud, and their CEO has been indicted by the Department of Justice for actions in unrelated companies. In these instances, the buyers were generally UHNWs who shelled out six figures or more to fly privately. By the same token, it’s easy to lose smaller amounts money, perhaps not inconsequential to your bank account. They are usually cloaked in promises of cheap private jet flights, often via empty legs.

These flights are pitched as a low rent way to fly privately. Here, the risk is less that the provider is going out of business than you didn’t understand what you signed up for.

Startup KinectAir is the latest provider to make big promises of cheap flights. The formula is to sign up a PR agency and issue press releases claiming to be revolutionizing and democratizing private jet travel, making it affordable for the masses.

The pitch letter from KinectAir’s public relations consultant stated, “Next week, a trailblazer in the private air travel industry will announce the release of their empty leg marketplace, an industry-first software suite that leverages untapped tech tools like flight repositioning and empty leg coordination to offer reasonable, cost-effective prices in a rich, seamless booking experience.”

In the press release KinectAir claimed of its empty leg marketplace, “This is the ultimate tool for flexible and spontaneous travelers, truly democratizing private flights, making them as accessible as booking a car and as affordable as commercial air travel. Everyone should experience the convenience of private air travel and the joy and wonder of stress-free flying.”

The result was outlets from CNN (“Uber-style private airplane trips are here – and flights cost from $111”) to even public broadcasting (“Vancouver, Washington-based startup KinectAir wants to expand private flying beyond the ultra-rich”) covered the announcement. It’s great media coverage for what is a smaller broker. It’s as if your local hardware store launched an app and was receiving write-ups that made it appear as if they were taking on Home Depot.

After talking to an executive at KinectAir and then playing around with the website, as best I could tell, there is little revolutionary about what the company is doing. Some nice interfaces embellish the