Why High-Earners Choose Private Jet Travel
Discover how Airly transforms private jet travel into a strategic tool for high achievers, focusing on efficiency, privacy, and convenience to maximise productivity and success.
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Tag: private jet card
Private Jet Card Year in Review: 2022
We review the most cost effective private jet card in Australia and how it performed in calendar year of 2022.
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The airlines let George down, so he did something about it
Time after time, George was being let down.
If you’re a busy individual like George, running multiple businesses, travelling frequently with a young family at home, his story would be familiar.
George frequently travels between Melbourne and Sydney for his businesses, avoiding overnights so he could spend more time at home with his family.
This entailed a carefully planned day trip – and required his commercial flights to run on time (or close enough to).
But year after year, declining on time performance and growing cancellation rates let him down. His Platinum status providing little value with the airline duopoly.
Then came the final straw, having his day in Sydney planned to the minute, all meetings ticked off and en route to the airport, his flight was cancelled and subsequently rebooked the following day.
This was George’s ‘ah ha’ moment.
He knew of private aviation already, chartering once or twice a year as well as booking empty legs.
But while in his hotel room in Sydney he came across Access by Airly.
A product where he could trust us to get him where he needed to be, when he needed to be there.
Not just that, providing this service for a fixed price enabling him to budget annual travel expenses.
This sole decision put George back in control of his day, gifting him more time and the certainty that he would be home in time for dinner with his young family.
Seamless and stress free travel, whether you’re on the clock or clocking off
Airline On Time Performance (OTP) for July was atrocious, which should be concerning for any business or leisure traveller.
The role of an airline when accepting your payment is to safely move you from A to B, at the date and time with which you book. But, Australian travellers can and should expect more than this common excuse.
We’re extremely lucky in Australia that our national airline safety record is among the best in the world.
But, in terms of arriving on the date and time as scheduled, the airlines are grossly failing (55% of the time airlines were on time), and that is if they get you there at all (6.4% average cancellation rate).
This doesn’t even consider the unfortunate experience some travellers encountered in queuing for hours outside the terminal, curbside; or being told they weren’t ‘match fit’ for travel.
This ongoing decline of the airlines was what led Ola, a fast-paced and energetic business leader in the cosmetics industry, to seek an alternative.
Despite Ola’s high Frequent Flyer status and ability to use her business-trip accumulated points for regular holidays with her young family, Ola needed certainty as her quality of travel and subsequently life and job were being affected.
The unreliability was impacting her business trips, at best adding delays, and often resulting in cancelled client or supplier meetings. Even her holidays this year were impacted – compounded by the fact Ola was flying with her two young children.
Ola came across Airly and our Access program on social media, which immediately appealed.
A single product that allowed her to travel for business and leisure.
A profound increase to reliability, convenience, and flexibility when travelling on business, and the most enjoyable experience when flying with her family. And, of course, peace of mind that Ola and her family are flying in a proven aircraft, underpinned by a strong safety system.
How likely will your Melbourne – Sydney flight arrive on time?
We’ve been patiently waiting for the airline’s on time performance results from June.
Recently, there’s been substantial coverage on airline cancellations, delays and security queues going as far as the eye can see.
Our patience has been rewarded.
Less than half a chance of arriving on time from Sydney to Melbourne
Saying less than half is probably too nice.
If you flew commercial from Sydney to Melbourne you had a 42.5% chance of arriving on time.
A total of 15.3% of flights were cancelled too.
By all reports, July is looking no better as the airlines continue to fight their low cost staffing solutions, flu/covid and a lack of ‘match fit’ travellers (their words, not ours).
Remember George? In June he arrived to his destination right on time, every time.
This article is a bit of a throwback.
Remember George? He was the first card holder we introduced you to several months ago.
A multi business owner and super busy father of two, George was continually left stranded by the airlines.
This resulted in him being stuck at airports instead of being home to enjoy dinner with his young family.
He found our Access by Airly program back in June last year. We’re sure he’s watching the chaos ensuing in the domestic terminals not missing it one bit.
Will doesn’t pay positioning fees. How does that compare to charter?
Ever wondered how brokers and operators set their price when you book a private jet?
In most cases they determine the total flight time from the jet’s home base, to your location, to your destination and finally back to the jet’s home base.
Simple enough?
But for our card holder, Will, being located away from the major cities meant he was paying significantly more to have a jet position empty to pick him up.
Will would pay for 5 hours of flying for his 2 hour flight. He only tried charter once before deciding the cost couldn’t be justified.
Enter: Access by Airly.
An Australian-first, Will is only billed for the time he is on the Cessna Citation Mustang, our program aircraft. He doesn’t pay empty positioning fees.
Airly achieves this via a network approach with over 30 card holders requesting flights in all directions. The operations team can then allocate a jet to pickup multiple card holder flights.
The efficient network means there’s less ‘waste’ (empty flying) and provides a very compelling price structure for its card holders.
So how does the program stack up versus charter?
Not only do we transform your A to B, we make it cost effective.
Card holders who felt they’d fly private once or twice a year are now flying every month.
Several never thought they’d fly private, and now they experience it multiple times a year.
Trusting the Mustang with those hard to reach airports
Size does matter, and it’s not why you think.
The Cessna Citation Mustang, the program aircraft for our Access by Airly program has impressive short field performance.
Requiring under 1,000 metres of sealed runway to safely take off and land opens a new world to our card holders.
At the time of writing, the program coverage area provides safe access to 130+ airports in South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Australia Capital Territory, New South Wales and Queensland.
It was this facet of the program that was so important to our card holder Will.
He is able to take off from an airport much closer to home, and land at an airport far closer to his final destination.
Not only does this save Will time, it is far more convenient removing the fatigue of multi leg trips he previously experienced.
So whether you’re flying Tumut to Taree, or Echuca to Emerald, the Mustang will get you there.
Airly transformed Will’s day on the road to just a two hour flight
Will has a strong heritage in agriculture. A third generation farmer who’s seen it all.
Droughts and floods, through to the ups and downs of international trade.
Growing up as a kid, Will’s father was in charge of the family farming businesses. His father would spend weeks away from home travelling between farms, warehouses and sites.
And although his father would have loved to be in one place with the family, the conditions weren’t always perfect for crops so one location turned into three across multiple states.
The little family business grew quickly into a successful operation in numerous facets of agriculture.
When Will began working in the business, he would spend days on the road with his Dad. Great for bonding but horrible for efficiency.
As a father and son team, the fatigue and stress of travel took its toll over the decades of driving.
He knew the business wouldn’t reach its true potential unless the travel side of things became more efficient.
Will soon became familiar with chartering aircraft through his network in an attempt to eliminate long drives.
The time saving was profound, but it still felt disjointed, confusing and not having any jets based at his home airport ended up costing much more than he expected having to pay positioning fees.
Thankfully, a friend referred Will to Access by Airly.
Will reached out to us and signed up on the same day.
The biggest benefit of this program was Will didn’t have to pay the positioning fees, making private aviation far more cost effective for the business.
Prior to joining, Will’s day of travel from Regional VIC to Central QLD would take 2 commercial flights and 3 hours in the car.
We now safely get William and his team from A to B in 2 hours.
Access by Airly turns 1
Ever forgotten your child’s birthday?
Us neither, till now.
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.
How often do the airlines arrive on time?
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.
That’s why he signed up to Access by Airly.
Our promise is we’ll get you where you need to be, when you need to be there.
The only thing that can stop us is the weather, and even then we’ll have Plan B ready to implement.