1st of June marked the first birthday of our Access by Airly program, the first of its kind in Australia.
Access by Airly was created by the founding team following constant feedback that customers wanted a pricing approach like the US and Europe: where you don’t have to pay for empty positioning.
We one upped that request by bringing in a level of simplicity and reliability not seen in the market locally.
Things started slowly, like all new business models.
The first 12 months
We launched 1 June, in the middle of a global pandemic with states closing and opening borders like a revolving door.
Regions were locked down making intrastate travel difficult, let alone interstate, great timing!
Our first card holder, Victoria, got the ball rolling making the most of weekends away at the snow.
Within six months we had 19 card holders and reached our first milestone of 100 card hours.
Fast forward to today, we’re proud to have 30 card holders. We’ve booked 200+ demand hours and our operating partner increased their fleet size from 3 to 6 Citation Mustangs to keep up with demand.
It’s been a battle, it’s been stressful, but it’s so rewarding to see how we impact the lives of our card holders.
Keeping their loved ones safe, getting them where they need to be on time, and transforming what used to be a day on the road into a 2 hour flight.
Big improvements are in the works – but for today (albeit a week late), cheers to you.
Sign-up fees are common with private jet programs in the United States, but the concept is less common or proven in Australia. This article helps explain what it is, why we have it in place, and how it enables our value-driven occupied hourly rate.
Our Access by Airlyprogram comes with an annual fee of $9,950 for two card holders.
For those who aren’t familiar with private, or perhaps have only chartered once or twice in the past, this can feel like quite a charge for no immediate product or service.
The reason the annual fee exists is to help smooth and flatten the fixed costs involved in operating, positioning, and making available six premium Cessna Citation Mustang jets for card holders. This enables us to deliver a consistent and low occupied hourly rate by reducing and removing unexpected operating costs caused by factors such as repositioning, holding, taxiing, and delays.
Additionally, the annual fee contributes to ensuring the highest quality service providers, operators, pilots, building an incredible team, and being able to update our platform on a regular basis.
So when real-world Access cardholder George was in the process of signing up, he also had some reservations about the annual fee. However, the fact that he was planning to fly 5-8 times a year made the cost savings compelling.
How soon did George make back his annual fee in savings?
Despite traveling mostly for business, George first utilised his Access by Airly card in taking his family to Byron Bay for a five-night holiday.
To charter, it would have cost him $20,500 return for a similar size jet.
Under Access by Airly, George paid $10,387 return, immediately saving him more than the annual fee he paid.
On average, our card holders make their annual fee back by the second or third trip – and that’s not including all the additional value the program provides outside of competitive flight pricing:
Six jets available to you on the east coast – no other provider can provide such coverage;
The most consumer-friendly booking, cancellation, and change terms;
Each month the Department of Infrastructure (their actual title is much much longer) releases data on the aviation industry.
And one report we enjoy reading is the Domestic airline on time performance report.
The Department measure the departure, arrival and cancellation performance of the major airlines along all domestic routes. This gives us key insight as to why we keep receiving phone calls from potential card holders like George.
Pre covid, when Sydney – Melbourne was one of the busiest air routes in the world we witnessed under half of all flights actually arrive on time (scheduled arrival time + or – 15 minutes).
But we felt that’s unfair looking that far back, so we decided to take a look at the January 2022 performance between Melbourne and Sydney, the results didn’t disappoint.
So how did the airlines perform in January 2022?
Even in January 2022, when the airlines desperately wanted your custom, they could barely get you into Sydney on time, cancelling a quarter of flights.
It’s horrid performances like this that destroyed our card holder, George‘s, schedule.
He wanted to fly to Sydney from Melbourne in the morning and hit the ground running meeting as many partners, investors and clients as possible without the need to spend the night away.
And when he was one of the 25% on average having their flight cancelled, his precise schedule was thrown into chaos.
If you travel frequently, even a couple of times a year, George’s story will be very familiar.
A busy self-made entrepreneur with a young family, George needs to travel for his business and put faith in the airlines as flying by private jet felt a little out of reach.
Like all of us, George was up at 4AM to catch the first flight to Sydney.
Trading the good morning cuddles from his kids for the lonely drive to the airport.
Knowing he would miss school drop offs for queuing with random travellers piling into the same plane.
His plan of attack once on the ground in Sydney was precise and had little margin for error.
Only while enroute to be sent an SMS by his airline that the flight to Sydney was cancelled.
That’s it, no “here’s what we’ll do to fix things”, just a recommendation to call the offshore call centre.
George’s day is now destroyed, meetings need to be pushed where possible and and then there’s the hassle and stress rebooking onto a later flight.
This is how the airlines treat their customers.
The very lifeblood that keeps them in the air, are their largest inconvenience.
A product that revolves around you, a company that adores its card holders.
George could book a four seat light jet, with as little as a few hours notice and know exactly what the cost was going to be via the fixed occupied hourly pricing.
He could now arrive into a private lounge 15 minutes prior to departure. No security, no queues, no hassles. Compared to the chaotic airport lounges, the Fixed Base Operator’s lounge was eerily quiet.
A safe, clean, and reliable jet paired with healthy gourmet catering meant George could hit the ground running, meet those prospects, and close more deals.
And the best part?
George could now get those good morning cuddles, leave his home in Brighton at 7AM for a 7:20AM wheels up out of Moorabbin and arrive at his first meeting in Sydney’s CBD by 9:15AM.
It gets better.
By the end of his busy day, George’s jet will be ready to fly him home in time for dinner.
Imagine having a travel platform that works to your schedule, not someone else’s.
Paying by Amex and Crypto, all of George’s flights are 100% carbon offset as part of his hourly rate.
Time is money, can you afford to be left behind by the airlines?
A neat, comfortable and super cost effective modern twin engine jet, for what it lacks in size it definitely makes up for in design.
When Cessna went to the drawing board back in 2002 they had a clear focus on the Mustang being that smaller family SUV.
One that could take the family to smaller airports but not restrict everyone to one piece of hand luggage each.
One of the design breakthroughs wasn’t in the cabin itself.
Found in the rear luggage compartment, Cessna specifically designed a 191cm long, rectangular tube dubbed the ‘Ski Tube’.
Connected to to the larger luggage hold, this ski tube allows passengers to take their skis, snowboards, golf clubs and even surfboards with them.
So we put the ski tube to the test. Rhys – one of our card holder’s favourite pilots sent us this video.
So this brings us back to Victoria. For those who don’t know, Victoria is part of our ACCESS by Airly program.
We transformed her A to B with the assistance of the ski tube.
Victoria would fly by private jet from Sydney to Cooma (then VIP chauffeur to the ski slopes) and was able to bring her skis saving money and plenty of hassles at the other end.
In 2019 we recognised that as a growing business, we needed to be environmentally responsible. We spent a lot of the year researching carbon offset programs, and were largely disappointed at the low number of Australian businesses addressing this, as well as the lack of suitable domestic carbon reduction programs that brought additional environmental & social benefits.
This year we committed to becoming a carbon positive organisation, we have calculated our ACCESS by Airly carbon footprint and are actively reducing our operational emissions via improved utilisation of assets, environmentally-friendly catering accessories and championing the importation of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF).
We have committed to offsetting our unavoidable or remaining emission through Carbon Positive Australia (CPOZ). CPOZ is a registered Australian charity, that has been restoring degraded land and sequestering carbon through biodiverse native tree planting for the last 21 years.
Carbon Positive Australia met all the criteria that we needed: an Australian organisation, Australian restoration projects, auditable, simple & transparent reporting where over 95% of the funds are directed towards project execution rather than administrative expenses.
We’re proudly an Australian business, and we’re even more proud to say that as from March onwards we offset 100% of our ACCESS by Airly program.
Warren Buffet once famously said “Price is what you pay – value is what you get.”
Let’s apply this to Victoria’s travel options from Sydney to Thredbo, for herself and her two children, and compare ACCESS by Airly to both commercial and charter options from a value perspective.
ACCESS by Airly:
ACCESS by Airly: $9,950 annual fee (assume 10 flights per year): $995 amortised
Flight from Sydney Airport to Snowy Mountains (Cooma) Airport: $2,716 (whole aircraft)
Ground transfers from Rose Bay to Sydney Airport, and Cooma to Thredbo: $250
Total: $3,991 (including ACCESS annual fee)
Door to door trip time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Via commercial air travel, Victoria could choose to fly to Canberra:
Flight from Sydney Airport to Canberra: Between $208 and $450 per person ($624 – $1,350) economy, or $760 business class ($2,280)
Ground transfers from Rose Bay to Sydney Airport and Canberra to Thredbo: $800 (3 hours)
Total: Between $1,800 (economy) – $3,080 (business)
Door to door trip time: 5 hours
And a charter flight estimate:
Sydney to Snowy Mountains (Cooma) Airport in a Cessna Mustang: $6,835
Ground transfers from Rose Bay to Sydney Airport, and Cooma to Thredbo: $350
Total: $7,185
Door to door trip time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Overall, ACCESS by Airly’s value is compelling in terms of the time to price ratio, while the journey experience is without rival.
When planning a trip, do you find yourself sticking to major centres because they are the only locations reasonably serviced by the airlines?
Or if you want to explore the smaller regions, would you concede to driving hours on end each way?
This scenario was very real for our ACCESS by Airly card holder, Victoria.
Seeking to explore the alpine regions on weekends with her children, Victoria had to weigh up how to get there as the airlines provided very few options from Sydney.
Victoria could fly to Canberra spending at least two hours at the airport / in the air and then a further three hours driving to Thredbo. Alternatively, Victoria had the option of ‘just’ driving for five hours to avoid the multi-modal hassle.
But a near miss driving in poor weather at night led Victoria to researching travel via private jet, thanks to ACCESS by Airly.
Flying private opens the door to new opportunities and destinations.
We flew Victoria and her daughter from Sydney to Cooma, and had a chauffeur ready when the jet arrived to safely drive them up to Thredbo. The whole trip took just over one and half hours from their front door to arriving at their alpine hotel.
For card holders like Victoria, we open the door to 100+ airports, around 70 more than the commercial airlines.
Let’s say you need to visit a client in Bendigo, and also have a property you wish to view in Newcastle. Forget commercial, as at a minimum your planning will have you on the road and catching connecting flights over several days before you get back home.
With ACCESS by Airly, we connect those dots for you, at a palatable price point compared to charter.
The dark dots indicate airports serviced by the commercial airlines. ACCESS by Airly covers said dots as well as all of the gold dots as well.
And not only will we connect those dots, we’ll have you home in time for dinner.
Like any parent, we always want the best for our children. We want to keep them safe, we want them to experience as much as possible.
And for Victoria, she would make the most of every Winter by driving her daughter to the snowfields several times during the snow season.
But with school and a busy personal schedule during the week, Victoria would leave late Friday driving five hours in low light and bad weather to ensure that come Saturday morning they could maximise their time on the slopes.
The long drives took its toll, so Victoria sought to find a way to maximise the time spent on the slopes without the dangers of driving at night for long hours.
Victoria explored the option of flying by private jet to save time, and make for a stress-free trip. However, paying over $15,000 for a weekend away just didn’t make sense.
Thankfully, via social media, Victoria came across ACCESS by Airly.
Through the program, Victoria could now fly from Sydney to Cooma in 35 minutes and jump on the waiting Mercedes van to whisk her and the family to Thredbo.
ACCESS by Airly reduced the travel time from 5 hours to just 90 minutes.
The process to book was simple, the experience was seamless and the price point was also far more palatable: under $3,000 each way.
ACCESS has had a profound impact on Victoria and her family’s life.
Simple and seamless A to B at a far more reasonable price point gave Victoria her life back and alleviated her stress when it came to travel.
Back in June of 2021, in the midst of some pretty horrid market conditions we launched the first twenty five ACCESS cards in a stealth fashion.
We kept marketing to a minimum so those who followed us on our journey could be the first to experience the new offering.
The card program was the first of its kind in Australia, many have conceptualised and tried, but never managed to get the product operational.
In February we managed to effectively sell our initial release out, and prepare to launch the next 15 cards.
Fast forward to this morning, we had our card holder and her family arrive to some special treats and a nice chilled bottle of bubbly to celebrate our 100th demand hour.
An incredible way to start their long weekend in Tasmania.
We always knew ACCESS would be impactful – either by making private more affordable, easier to consume or understand. But it’s had a far greater impact than we first thought.
We are giving our card holders their lives back.
Appreciating how much time we have given back to card holders based in Regional Victoria who can now be on location at their farm in Central Queensland within 2 hours where it used to take a full day of road and commercial travel.
Or getting a father back to his children in time for dinner after a day on the ‘road’. Where in the past he used to spend several days travelling to achieve the same outcome.
We aren’t about transactions, we’re about people: our card holders.
Because when you have a true understanding of what impact you have on people, it makes all of our pain and hard work in building this product worth it.
We are so proud, so grateful and so excited for what’s to come.
