Virgin Charter: Fly Like Branson
Virgin Charter's Web site makes bidding easy
(if you have several thousand to spare).
It was only Monday evening, but the hyperactive Richard Branson had already had what for anyone else would be an exhausting week. He had jumped off a Hilton hotel in Mumbai to launch Virgin Mobile in India, hopped on a charter jet from India to New York City, and then raced straight from the airport in a new GM hydrogen fuel cell car to a Manhattan news conference to announce he was purchasing a few of the green vehicles to ferry Virgin Atlantic Upper Class fliers from their homes to the airport. By that night he'd gone on to slap the Virgin brand on yet another product launch--fittingly, a service that will allow travelers to charter private jets just like the one that had gotten him to his news conference on time (or sort of--he was 30 minutes late).
But while Branson seems to announce a new product or company about once a week, the inevitably named Virgin Charter is one of his more intriguing endeavors. While Virgin is a majority owner, the company is actually the brainchild of dot-com veteran Scott Duffy, who has pulled together elements from eBay, Priceline, and Travelocity.
Over grilled radicchio and roast rib of aged beef at the Spotted Pig restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village, Branson and Duffy explained how it works: Essentially, it's an online service that allows customers to input a request for a charter jet, which jet owners and operators will then "bid" on with a price quote. Like eBay, it will give both users and sellers a forum to post reviews of their experiences with each other. And finally, the company is working with Travelocity Business to offer its services directly to its large client base.
Duffy claims that by cutting out the middleman and eschewing such complicated setups as those used by the fractional jet ownership companies, the company will save customers around 20 percent off the cost of jet charters, plus much of the time they would spend searching for and securing a chartered plane.
Still, that's 20 percent off a very steep price--jet charters typically are priced by the hour, and $2,000 an hour can really add up. So the big question for business travelers is: Will Virgin Charter make it possible for your average road warrior or well-to-do leisure traveler to fly in a private jet without going into debt? Maybe -- the company is hoping that it can put customers on the return trips that chartered jets must often make empty after they've dropped passengers at their destination. Duffy says that "empty legs" account for up to 50 percent of all private jet flying, which not only cuts into profits but is also a huge energy waster. Listed under "hot deals" on virgincharter.com, this could be the ticket for those longing to escape the indignities of commercial air travel. Duffy claims that trips could be as cheap as $600 for a Las Vegas to Los Angeles flight. We'll see.
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