Jay Z-backed Private Jet Service To Start New York-to-Boston Service
JetSmarter, a private jet startup backed by investors including rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z, will begin flying customers from New York City to Boston beginning Sept. 13.
The shuttle service will allow customers to reserve single seats on shared private planes in order to fly from New York to Boston and Washington D.C.
Backed by $55 million in investor funding, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based startup plans to allow its members to book on-demand and scheduled flights between popular U.S. cities as well as in Europe and the Middle East. Jay Z and the Saudi Royal Family are among its investors.
“We are very excited to continue the expansion of our JetShuttle service into the D.C. and Boston regions, offering an increasingly extensive and exciting schedule for our customers across the US,” said Sergey Petrossov, founder and CEO of JetSmarter in a statement.
JetSmarter, which allows users to book flights directly through a mobile app, charges its members an annual fee of $10,000 with a one-time initiation fee of $5,000 to get a certain number of seats on scheduled flights. The startup’s previous business model allowed users that are not members to also use the service to book on-demand private jet flights, but the service is now members only and is more expensive than its original plan.
Users can also choose to rent the entire jet or share seats with others.
The company had said previously it’s the largest provider of scheduled flights on airplanes with under 19 seats.
While Petrossov, 27, wouldn’t disclose specifics on customer numbers in a March interview with the Business Journal, he said the company’s mobile app has been downloaded “well north” of 350,000 times.
JetSmarter has access to more than 3,000 private jets (brands include Gulfstream, Challenger and Falcon), under 19 seats. The company is licensed by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration to offer private aviation transportation, Petrossov said.
JetSmarter is one of a few companies trying to disrupt private aviation travel. Others include New York-based Wheels Up, whose co-founder lives in Boston, and offers a membership model that aims to reduce the cost of flying privately. That company is backed by more than $100 million in investor funding.
Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge was recently named to the board of JetSmarter. Ridge’s involvement will reinforce its global safety and security infrastructure, according to the South Florida Business Journal.
Other aviation startups have fared less well than JetSmarter and Wheels Up because they have tried to operate under different business models. For example, Flytenow, a Northeastern University-born aviation startup that offered a website that connects private pilots with passengers willing to share a flight and split the cost of flying, had to cease operations after an FAA fight.
Source: Boston Business Journal, Sara Castellanos
Photo: JetSmarter, a Florida-based startup, is expanding its service to Boston. Its mobile app allows users to book single seats on scheduled private jet flights between Boston and Miami.