A TV interview (Maria Bartiromo) with Scott Duffy, CEO/founder of Virgin Charter, about the upcoming Virgin Charter online marketplace for booking private jets. The service is invitation-only at the time of the interview with a planned full launch later that fall; Duffy describes market size, operator fragmentation, pricing transparency goals, and rising demand for private aviation (including business users).
Questions this video answers
Invitation-only (not fully launched).
Planned for later that fall.
Over 10,000 business jets in the United States.
Over 2,500 operators.
A typical operator controls three to five aircraft.
Chapters
Well, take over. Talk might be circulating on Expedia, but the competition in airline travel is also heating up. Virgin has launched what some now dub as the ebay for private jets. The online site called Virgin Charter makes chartering a small jet as easy as booking a flight online. But will the idea fly among consumers? Joining me now, the CEO and founder of Virgin Charter, Scott Duffy. Scott, nice to have you on the program.
Thank you very much.
Thanks so much for joining us. First off, this right now is invitation only. It's not launched fully yet, correct?
That's correct. Okay. And your launch will be launching later this fall.
Tell me how it works and how expensive it is. I guess that's the main question for so many people if they're going to be able to afford this.
Well, when most people think of aviation, they think of commercial aviation, where a handful of operators control all the aircraft. Private aviation is completely different. In private aviation, there's over 10,000 business jets in the United States alone with over 2500 operators. A typical average operator controls only three to five aircraft. And the biggest challenge, the challenge in private aviation is that there's no glue. No one brings everybody together. So buyers are looking for more choices, and sellers, they're looking for more customers. And that's the solution that we're going to provide, right?
No, it looks like a good solution. Obviously, who wouldn't want to be on that beautiful plane that we were just showing? But how much is it, Scott?
Well, it depends on the particular trip. What's great about Virgin charter.com is for the first time, sellers can go online and make their inventory available to a larger customer base. Buyers can go online, search for available aircraft, pricing, purchase private air travel, and manage their entire trip online. What we believe is that price transparency will create competition for the best customers, which ultimately will lower pricing.
Very interesting. And it's also interesting how you came up with the idea. You at the time were your former executive@quote.com, sportsLine, as well as Zoom. You were out there trying to raise venture capital money. And this idea came. Tell me how it all started.
Yes. Well, actually, what happened was Virgin had been looking for quite some time at the private aviation business. In fact, they had considered building and launching their own private fleet. But they also decided that the biggest problem in the industry wasn't a lack of available aircraft. The biggest problem was it's so hard to buy and sell charter on the existing fleet. At the same time, my team, which included startup executives from Expedia, Google and ebay, were taking a technology approach to solving this problem. And the two of us came together what Virgin believed is Virgin believed by combining our technology expertise with the Virgin brand, capital resources, marketing expertise and customer service standards, we could create a product that would be unparalleled in private aviation. Right.
And a lot of people think this is just for the wealthy. You say this is going to be really for the masses.
That's true. In fact, what we find in private aviation is 25% growth year over year in customer demand. The other thing that we're seeing is a very big increase in business users. Right. And the reason is business users no longer look at private aviation as a luxury item. They see it as a productivity tool.
All right. We'll leave it there. Scott, thanks so much for joining us. Best of luck with it. We appreciate it. Scott Duffy, founder and CEO of Virgin Charter.
