Ken Haney has flown in the cockpit of military and commercial planes for more than 35 years. His business partner Steve Geldmacher has logged more than 4 million miles as a traveler. Both say they have watched too many fliers lose valuable time to crowded airports, security lines and flight delays.
“We both basically went through and saw firsthand the difficulties in traditional commercial flying and really wanted to change the dynamics of how that model works,” Geldmacher said.
A better option for business, they decided, lies somewhere between commercial flying and chartering a private aircraft. Their company, Texas Air Shuttle, is the latest in Houston to cater to the burgeoning demand for ride-sharing in the sky. They are set to launch service in the next month or so with all-you-can-fly memberships starting at $1,895 a month that let travelers reserve seats on a plane that runs scheduled flights.
Dallas-based Rise and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based JetSmarter already offer members this semiprivate service to and from the Bayou City.
“It says there’s a huge demand for an alternative service like this to commercial,” Geldmacher said. “It says that people are fed up with commercial flying and the experience that goes along with it.”
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Hans Reigle, director of the Aviation Program at Delaware State University, said memberships for such services are reasonably priced compared with maintaining one’s own flight operations. He agreed that dips in the economy should boost their popularity as corporate flight departments downsize.
“It’s a safe, efficient way to have the benefits of corporate aviation without all of the costs,” Reigle said.
But some worry about the security and regulatory oversight of ride-sharing services.
“Ride-sharing programs that don’t screen passengers and their baggage present a significant risk to the flying public. If a stranger can board an aircraft bristling with weapons or worse, an explosive device, that’s clearly a problem,” Scott Bickford, co-founder of the Air Charter Association of North America, said in a written statement.
“Of course,” he added, “if there are ride-share programs that screen passengers and baggage, then this isn’t an issue. The concern is that it should be a regulatory requirement, not a decision by ride-share companies whether or not to screen passengers and their baggage.”
Flight-sharing companies in Houston emphasized safety, noting that they have various processes for screening passengers. They say they’re Argus Gold Rated or work with operators that have, at minimum, this third-party safety rating for charter operators or the Wyvern Wingman Standard safety benchmarking.
Companies also touted their ability to save time. A 2013 report identifying the impact of stress in business travel found that an average of 5.2 hours are lost per domestic trip, according to consulting firm CWT Solutions Group. This lost time arises from factors such as getting to the airport and flying economy class on medium- and long-haul flights.
Geldmacher estimates he’s spent the equivalent of four years walking in terminals, waiting at gates and sitting in planes as they taxi for takeoff. That’s on top of actual flight time, he said.
Ride-sharing services say they reduce this time by favoring smaller airports over congested hubs. Travelers don’t hunt for parking, and they don’t wait in long security lines.
“It’s all about making them productive,” Haney said. “Time is money.”
Texas Air Shuttle, which is based at Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport, will begin with flights to smaller airports in the Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Midland and Oklahoma City areas. It wants to add flights to Austin, New Orleans, northwest Arkansas, Corpus Christi and Harlingen. The three-year goal is to fly to more than 40 markets and offer 250 flights a day.
The parallels to Uber/Lyft and the cab industry are obvious, though any regulatory fights will play out at another level. It seems to me that a regional high-speed passenger rail system could be the biggest competitor to an outfit like this, since they could be competitive on travel times as well as being a lot cheaper. We’re a long way off from that, even once Texas Central gets rolling, so they have nothing to worry about on that front at this time. It’s more a matter of reaching the market that might be best suited for them.