Website Offers Air Charter Booking
<H1>Website Offers Air Charter Booking
</H1>By Cheryl Rosen
New York - A new Internet site, InterJet Online Services Inc., allows travel managers to easily book charter aircraft and bypass the 5 to10 percent commission often paid to charter brokers-and to achieve significant savings by hitching one-way rides on empty charter planes returning from other people's flights.
InterJet's Website (http://www.interjet-osi.com) offers a simple form that asks the dates a plane is needed, where the passengers are leaving from and how many seats are needed. The computer responds with the names, addresses, fax numbers and phone numbers of charter aircraft operators that have planes available to fit the request; complete descriptions of the planes, including optional equipment such as VCRs, TVs, and telephones; and photographs of many of the aircraft.
Included on the site are "deadhead" listings of planes that are flying empty one way, going to or coming from another job, for which operators will offer particularly good deals to corporations looking to book single or group passage on the empty segment of the flight.
"These flights have already been booked by a customer who is covering the costs for the full round trip," said InterJet president Sam Trowe. "If you offer them a fraction of the regular fare, they will probably take you, because the flight is coming back with you or without you, and not making any revenue at all. The cost will depend simply on how good a negotiator you are. The best deal I ever heard was a $4,000-an-hour Gulfstream that chartered for $611, but I'd say the average savings is about 50 percent."
Trowe suggested that travel managers using the service make sure that quoted prices include additional fees such as landing fees, taxes and catering. But he noted that the corporate air charter business is a $30 billion market, and that every company listed on the site has supplied operational specs, insurance certificates and Part 135 air carrier certificates from the FAA.
The site logged 2,700 hits in its first month of operation, Trowe said, although he cannot tell how many actual bookings were made because users contact the charter companies directly.
While the company plans to eventually offer global listings, the site now lists aircraft in the northeastern United States, California and Florida. The Southwest and mid-Atlantic states will be added next.