Surf Air - Netflix for flying

[Seth]

This is very neat.  I've been watching since hearing about it and move information is now availale.  The idea is to have a fleet of PC-12's to fly back and forth on certain routes as on-demand private aircraft service.  I'm curious to watch how Surf Air does on the west cost as I'm thinking this would work fantastically on the east coast with even more traffic congenstion and many small airport destinations to get something like this working.  Does this company have any legs?  Will it work?  What are the failure points. 

 

I searched but did not find the thread I thought I saw in the past discussing this idea.

 

What other aircraft would you use for this mission if you were starting up besides the PC-12?

 

-Seth

 

 

http://www.surfair.com/

 

 

 

 

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/new-airline-offers-all-you-can-fly-service.html

 

 

 

 

(Photo: Courtesy of Surf Air)

Not quite in love with commercial flying, but not yet a private plane owner?

Surf Air has the all-you-can-fly plan for you. Starting this summer, the new airline will offer members as many flights as they want, on a fleet of eight private planes, for just $790/month.

“It works largely the way Netflix does,” said Wade Eyerley, co-founder and a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. A $790 membership allows you to hold two reservations at a time – as soon as you fly, you can place another reservation. The $990 and $1,490 memberships allow you four and six reservations respectively.

(Photo: Courtesy of Surf Air)Wade and his brother, David, a former Frontier Airlines manager, are hoping to target the frequent fliers who aspire to rid themselves of long security lines and the hassle of commercial air travel. Instead of spending four or five hours getting from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Wade promises it will take you just 75 minutes on Surf Air. And, you don’t even have to take off your shoes.

Sleepy Air Canada pilot thought Venus was a plane

“We’re introducing the private plane experience to those that don’t have it now,” said Wade.

The flights are starting with the heavily traveled San Francisco-Los Angeles route, which 20 million fliers traveled last year according to the FAA. Initial stops will include Palo Alto, Monterey, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

“Too many people are driving. They should be flying,” said Wade. And he intends to get them on planes.

Surf Air is the only non-tech company launching this year out of the MuckerLab start-up accelerator based in Los Angeles. MuckerLab provides funding, guidance, and office space to promising start-ups.

Eventually, the brothers intend to expand the service, but they’re beginning with the pilot test route and just 500 memberships. After getting 12,000 email addresses from people who expressed interest, they realized they had to cap the service in its initial phase or they’d be oversubscribed and unable to deliver enough quality flights to members.

Applications for those first 500 memberships are being accepted right now. But, if you’re ready to say good-bye to frequent commercial travel, you’ll have to get your membership in soon. Just one week after announcing the plan, 300 all-you-can-fly memberships have already been filled.

[Seth]

Surf Air gets three new aircraft and $2.6 million for Christmas

By Michael Carney

On December 31, 2012

 

If you think developing a mobile app is difficult, try building an airline from the ground up. That’s the mountain Los Angeles startup Surf Air is hoping to summit. The company announced their plans for an all-you-can-fly, membership-based service to enormous fanfare this summer, and raised $3.76 million in VC and angel funding upon graduating from Santa Monica’s MuckerLab accelerator. Now it’s slowly checking “to do” items off its long and ambitious list.

The Surf Air team has been relatively quiet in recent months, focusing on obtaining final regulatory clearance for their ambitious project. But they came to the surface over the holidays to announce a few significant milestones. First and foremost, the company took delivery of three single-engine turboprop Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. Each aircraft can accommodate up to nine passengers plus a three person crew.

While details remain scarce with regard to the company’s regulatory status, the fact that it’s shelling out cash to lease its own aircraft is a strong sign that things are moving forward as planned. One investor in the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “If you had asked me three or four months ago, I would have been significantly skeptical that they were going to be able to pull it off. Today things are looking far more promising.”

The grand plan is to offer $1,000 per month unlimited flight memberships, initially between regional airports in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. According to co-founder Wade Eyerly, the goal is to prove the model in a single route and then expand to 25 strategic markets nationwide with up to six aircraft per market. Members will all be pre-screened, not unlike the line-busting system offered in major airports by Clear, allowing the passengers to avoid lengthy security procedures and instead drive up, hand their keys to a valet, and board their plane.

As I wrote when I first saw the company at their demo day:

For those questioning security and the ability to operate this ambitious plan, the company is founded by two brothers who consist of a pilot and a former member of the Department of Homeland Security, who personally flew an average of 27-days per month for years. To say they understand the market would be a dramatic understatement.

In addition to making room in its hangar for these new toys, Surf Air added an additional $2.6 million in funding to its bank account. The corresponding SEC filing paints the financing as part of an ongoing, planned $7 million funding round. The company’s earlier round was led by Anthem Venture Partners with participation from NEA, Siemer Ventures, Baroda Ventures, TriplePoint Capital, and several notable angels including Gil and Eytan Elbaz, Paige Craig, Bill Woodward, Rick Caruso, Jeffrey Stibel, Mike Walsh, and Aviv Grill.

Despite its notable progress, Surf Air still has enormous challenges standing between it and a sustainable business.

First, the company is said to be having difficulty finalizing an airport in its home market of Los Angeles. Regional options include Santa Monica and Burbank, but each presents its own regulatory and logistical challenge. Burbank is too far from the the Westside technorati that the company is targeting, while the sleepy Santa Monica airport is supposedly reticent to see the volume of traffic that Surf Air hopes to generate. If the company can’t solve this problem in its own backyard with the enormous goodwill of its well-heeled local investors, the viability of the whole nationwide plan must be questioned.

More concerning still is the onslaught of competition from dramatically larger players the company is sure to face, should this model gain any sort of traction. Air travel has been sliced and diced in every conceivable manner over the last five decades. Commercial has coach, premium coach, business, and first class in all their various incarnations. And private has seen countless flavors of charter, leasing, fractional, and full ownership. Surf Air’s model is new, at least in the current market, but to think that they’re the first to think of it is naive.

There are surely reasons why Richard Branson’s Virgin, Warren Buffett’s NetJets, and others haven’t previously offered all-you-can-fly, semi-commercial memberships. But if they see Surf Air successfully siphoning off their most lucrative business flyers, expect these titans to unleash the full weight of their financial and industry muscle to unseat the relatively under-capitalized challenger.

Surf Air has generated significant buzz and good will amid the VC and startup crowd for its travel-hacking model. Assuming it can successfully navigate the regulatory quagmire, expect it to see a good level of adoption in its “Silicon Valley to Silicon Beach” route. The good news is that according to the company, it can be profitable on a single route basis. If this initial rollout goes as planned, that’s when things will get interesting.

I know plenty of people who travel the LA to SF route the minimum of three times monthly as to make the plan economically beneficial. There are plenty of others still who travel less frequently, but would gladly pay a premium for the added convenience. In each camp, people are standing by, waiting for the company to cut the velvet ropes and see if this concept has wings.

 

[Seth]

Surf Air, Silicon Valley's Newest Airline, Caters To Wealthy Entrepreneurs, Investors

Posted: 04/ 6/2012 9:51 am Updated: 04/ 6/2012 11:52 am

reddit stumble

 

Surf's up: Surf Air caters to Silicon Valley's monied elite.

 

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When David Eyerly earned a partial scholarship to attend a California flight school, he asked his older brother Wade for some advice. Pilot jobs were tough to come by and David didn't see the payoff. But Wade, 32, wanted his brother to stick with flying and asked what it would take to keep him in the air. David, 27, joked that Wade could just buy a plane, start an airline and hire him.

"I took him more serious than he intended," says the older Eyerly, who on Thursday launched Surf Air, a new membership-based travel service that lets clients fly as many as 11 times each month between six California destinations for $990 a month.

Surf Air's members drive right up to an eight-person aircraft, where valet parks their car and takes their luggage, much like a private jet. Except the cost is drastically less than that of a private plane. Marquis Jet, one of the cheaper carriers in the industry, locks fliers in for at least 25 hours of flight time at $119,000 plus taxes and fees, according to its site. Surf Air's 500 current members are only required to make a three-month commitment ($2,970 total), after which they pay on a month-by-month basis.

Commercial flights between the destinations that Surf Air serves run around $250 round-trip, which makes Surf Air a cheaper option for business people who fly at least four times a month. Eyerly expects its members to average between five and nine one-way flights a month.

On top of the reduced price, Surf Air flights operate out of small regional airports, where Surf Air members don't have to deal with security or the hustle and bustle of major airports, which is part of the problem the startup aims to solve.

"Half of America's regional airports operate at less than 10 percent capacity and yet for some reason we keep flying through the same 29 overburdened airports in this country," says Eyerly, who used to fly 27 days out of most months as a member of Vice President Biden's advance press team.

(Pictured left: Wade Eyerly.)

Passengers of Surf Air can reserve at most six flights at one time. That could pose problems for ultra frequent travelers, such as those who fly three times a week, PandoDaily notes. "Passengers can't book their next trip until they're already back from the last one, and chances are the next flight they would want that week would already be booked."

Surf Air, which says it's paying around $700,000 a month to lease and operate two planes, wants to prove the model works before it expands its fleet or accepts new members.

"Once we can show the pay-off for our members and successfully demonstrate the model," Eyerly says, "it's a whole lot easier to walk into a venture capital firm and ask for $25 million to buy 30 planes."

So far, the company has funded itself -- including the cost of leasing the planes and some hefty lawyer fees to ensure it is abiding by regulations -- with personal funds and money from angel investors.

One of those investors, Paige Craige, who is the founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based startup Betterworks, and who often travels back and forth between Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, is just the type of customer Surf Air is targeting. Indeed, Silicon Valley and its surrounding areas are rife with wealthy entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and attorneys whom Surf Air says make up the lion's share of its first 500 members.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Silicon Valley-based Facebook, spent $700,000 last year for costs related to private plane use, according to papers filed for the company's initial public offering.

Perhaps Facebook's newest shareholders might appreciate Zuck cutting costs and instead flying Surf Air when its service launches mid-Summer.

[bnicolette]

Isn't this a similar model to what Day Jet was trying to do?  It's interesting that they already have a wait list for their membership.  Perhaps they've got the right idea and can make a go of it.  Sooner or later I really believe that we will have more of an "air taxi" carrier for the business and upper class traveler.  Too bad it takes fuel to move these suckers!

 

 

It's hard to beat at Pilatus for payload and seating with a single turbine up front. 

[WilliamR]

Would love to own a commercial or air taxi carrier.  But ask Day Jet, Satsair, Georgia Skies how they are making out.  Wait, you can't.  They are insolvent or bought out due to looming insolvency.  I will say the PR is confusing.  First, it says they are a cheap alternative to airline travel.  But then they say they are for "wealthy travelers".  So, who are they marketing to?  Also, to compare this service to private owned aircraft, Marquise, or NetJets is ridiculus.  Not being a consumer of NetJets or Marquise, I would guess those travelers like their privacy which looks unlikely in the Surf Air model. 

 

Reading between the lines it also appears most of their clients are also their investors.  Although that is just speculation.  I would hope that is the case and proves nothing.  Being a consumer of a business you own helps a little to hedge the risk of failure of your investment. 

 

I do have to give credit to the ImagineAir guys.  They have stayed around the South East longer than I expected.  Then again, a Cirrus is not a PC-12.  Plus, Imagine's pilots are not paid much.  Most of them seem to be semi-retired and frankly, less than impressive.

 

I wish Surf Air the best, but there are some significant financial, marketing, legal, and logistical hurdles to overcome.  When talking with non-commercial airports, they may be best served to not over sell themselves and block themselves out of a good location.  I do agree, the PC-12 would be my choice for this type of business. 

 

Note: Wade is too young and untested to be wearing senior banker suspenders.  You have to earn those.  I did. 

 

William

[Rwsavory]

Great idea, but I don't think it will be profitable at the price they charge. The airlines have more capital and expertise and will not cede these customers easily.

[NotarPilot]

How can they be making money at $790 a month when they're promising "all-you-can-fly?"

[teethdoc]

$990/mo for 500 members is $495k/mo revenue.  They say in the article their operating expenses are $700k/mo.  The nu7mbers don't add up.  Fuzzy math.

[NotarPilot]

I know a lot of guys in aviation who used fuzzy math and bilked a lot of people out of a lot of money. One of the biggest in recent times was Jerry Airola and Silver State Helicopters. That guy was the Bernie Madoff of aviation.

[flyboy0681]

I have to agree with all the comments here, the business model is not sustainable. The skeptic in me said that Day Jet would not work and long and behold.

 

Marquis and NetJet works due to the sheer cost to the member.

[Seth]

They had their first flight earlier this week. 

 

150 members currently and 3 airplanes.  Once they work their numbers in a real life test enviroment (as there's no modeling really available for this sort of venutre) they'll add members from the current 5000 on the wait list.  Then once they are sure the model works, they'll get a few more airplanes and add more members. 

 

-Seth

[Seth]

CEO Replaced - Curious what's next for Surf Air   - evidently they are up to 430 members

 

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/27/surf-air-eyerly-potter/

 

 

 

Surf Air Founder Wade Eyerly Steps Down, Replaced By Former Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter

 

 

 

The Surf Air management team has hit a bit of turbulence, with founder and CEO Wade Eyerly officially stepping down, according to an email sent out to members. He’s being replaced by someone who has had experience both in the membership and airline industries — former Exclusive Resorts and Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter.

Founded in 2011, Surf Air provides a membership-based private jet service between Palo Alto, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. The idea was that members would pay a monthly fee for an all-you-can-fly service between any of those points.

In 2012, the company raised $7 million in funding from investors like Anthem Venture Partners, and saw participation from NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Siemer Ventures, Baroda Ventures, Gilad and Eytan Elbaz, Rick Caruso, Jeffrey Stibel, Mike Walsh, Paige Craig, Aviv Grill, and Bill Woodward.

We had heard rumors that the management shakeup was taking place a few weeks ago, but the membership-only airline officially acknowledged the change to its members in an email earlier this week.

Despite having 430 paying members, the company was having trouble raising a new round of funding, according to a source. That might have been due to problems in the company’s operations. One member we talked to said that some of the airline’s scheduled flights were regularly overbooked, while other legs ended up running empty.

The management change is apparently being made to improve that, with the help of Potter and some folks who better understand the logistics of air travel.

In addition to the new CEO, the airline announced that Anthem Ventures EIR Sudhin Shahani is taking over the role of executive chairman. Jim Sullivan, who had previously served as VP of Flight Operations for Frontier, has joined Surf Air as SVP of Operations.

The shift also comes as Surf Air is adding new stops for its flights, including Las Vegas and Truckee, Calif.

For what it’s worth, Surf Air isn’t the only startup in the airline industry to have run into hard times. BlackJet, the so-called Uber for private jets, has also had problems raising more funding.

UPDATE: I’ve just spoken with Potter, who’s given me his view on Surf Air and his new role there.

He compares his joining Surf Air to the time in which he joined Frontier. At the time, it was an incredibly small, one year-old company that ended up growing to reach about 80 destinations throughout the U.S. when he left. That experience will be useful not just from an operational standpoint, but in helping Surf Air to expand into new territories.

“On the operational side, it’s not only that Jim [sullivan] and I have spent our careers in aviation,” Potter said. “Both Jim and I were at Frontier at a very similar stage to where I’m joining Surf Air. I helped support that growth from an operational perspective.”

He said that the business and the model are both sound, and that he’s excited about the membership component as well as the aviation component, based on his previous experience. He also said he’s confident that Surf Air will be able to complete its next round of fundraising and move forward from there.

“I joined a company at a time where we are going through a round of fundraising,” he said, but added, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have confidence that we would fulfill that. We’ve met with various parties and believe those conversations are going very well.”

UPDATE #2: And I just got off the phone with Eyerly, who confirmed that he handed in his resignation from the company and the board this morning.

“If you can get a guy like Jeff to run an airline with three aircraft then you have to do that,” Eyerly said. He added that after three weeks of trying to figure out what his role would be, he ultimately decided to step down. He’ll still have his ownership in the company, but will no longer have a day-to-day role.

“After some reflection, I discovered that I liked being a builder,” he told me, and that he was looking to start something new. But for Eyerly, after taking the company through three rounds of funding and growing it to have more than 65 employees, he said it was a “bittersweet moment” to leave the company which is growing up fast and ready to scale up even faster.

The email sent to Surf Air members is below:

Dear Surf Air Members,

Surf Air began the journey to revolutionize air travel in 2011, just three short years ago. Since that time, not only has Surf Air exceeded all expectations in disrupting the travel experience, it has resonated with you as members, which is reflective of the high renewal rate we’ve seen since inception.

Wade Eyerly created a vision that, along with his leadership and passion, has evolved into the innovative company that now serves over 430 members. We want to personally thank Wade for his tireless efforts to bring us to this point. With a solid foundation now created, as is the case with many companies during the early chapters of their inception and growth, the time has come for us to take the next step in the evolution of Surf Air. We are pleased to announce that along with upcoming funding, there are some key management additions with deep experience that will drive the next stage of our development.

To help lead this transition, Sudhin Shahani is taking the role of Executive Chairman. Sudhin will initially be focused on the investor and funding aspects of the company but he will also play an integral role in the long-term strategic direction of Surf Air.

In addition, we are pleased to announce that Jeff Potter has become our CEO. Jeff’s experience both in the membership club sector as well as the aviation sector fits the characteristics we need to scale Surf Air profitably and continue to improve the member experience. Jeff was CEO of Exclusive Resorts, the world’s largest luxury membership vacation club, and also served as CEO of Frontier Airlines, a major airline.

Finally, Jim Sullivan has joined the company as SVP of Operations. Jim has a long, storied history in aviation and at one point was VP of Flight Operations for Frontier Airlines. Prior to that, he held management positions as Director of Flight Training and Director of Process and Procedures. During his career as a pilot, he has achieved more than 18,000 flight hours.

We want to again thank Wade for all he has done to make Surf Air what it is today. We are extremely excited for the future and welcome the new leadership team as we begin the next step to grow Surf Air into the company we all know it can become.

We thank you for your ongoing support to our services – we commit ourselves every day to ensure that we are delivering you the best air travel experience possible. We look forward to continuing to lead the evolution of air travel and enhancing our services to continually meet your needs.

Along those lines, tomorrow, we are thrilled to be announcing some great news that we are confident will create a lot of energy and excitement! Please look for the news early in the morning and we hope you’ll be as excited as we are at the beginning of this next chapter!

Regards,

–

Surf Air Member Care

[Seth]

Well, they now have 12 aircraft 80+ flights per day, a new CEO, and 2500 members each paying supposedly nearly 2k per month.

Impressive.  

-Seth

[Hank]

28 minutes ago, Seth said:

Well, they now have 12 aircraft 80+ flights per day, a new CEO, and 2500 members each paying supposedly nearly 2k per month.

Impressive.  

-Seth

So whenya starting the Mid Atlantic branch???

[NotarPilot]

On June 28, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Seth said:

Well, they now have 12 aircraft 80+ flights per day, a new CEO, and 2500 members each paying supposedly nearly 2k per month.

Impressive.  

-Seth

Hmmm, a steady $5m a month in revenue or $60m a year? I wonder if that's sustainable to keep 12 planes flying, capital investment in new equipment going, paying salaries, ramp fees, etc. I really hope they survive. I love seeing their new PC-12s flying with their LED lighting at night. They look like spaceships. Very groovy!

[Bennett]

Except their very noisy operations are causing major problems for the other GA pilots at San Carlos airport. The local county Board of Supervisors has received a huge amount of complaints (noise and low flying) from local residents about the easily identifiable Surf Air turboprops - mostly from the Atherton and Menlo Park areas (wealthy, and politically astute). The B of Supervisors proposed impossible to live with new rules, and we, the pilot community have been fighting back hard, with hundreds (yes, hundreds) of pilots showing up the the Board meetings and speaking out strongly. A new temporary trial flight path for the Surf Air aircraft is in effect (VFR only) and no one knows what will happen next. I wish I could say that the Surf Air pilots were courteous, and good neighbors to GA at KSQL, but they not - often taxing to the entry to the one runway waiting for their IFR clearance even in VFR conditions at the airport, blocking all the GA aircraft waiting in the mandatory run up area. I'm not a fan of Surf Air as they have disrupted what has been a very active program of positive community involvement where most residents had perceived the airport in a positive light.

[Seth]

6 hours ago, Bennett said:

Except their very noisy operations are causing major problems for the other GA pilots at San Carlos airport. The local county Board of Supervisors has received a huge amount of complaints (noise and low flying) from local residents about the easily identifiable Surf Air turboprops - mostly from the Atherton and Menlo Park areas (wealthy, and politically astute). The B of Supervisors proposed impossible to live with new rules, and we, the pilot community have been fighting back hard, with hundreds (yes, hundreds) of pilots showing up the the Board meetings and speaking out strongly. A new temporary trial flight path for the Surf Air aircraft is in effect (VFR only) and no one knows what will happen next. I wish I could say that the Surf Air pilots were courteous, and good neighbors to GA at KSQL, but they not - often taxing to the entry to the one runway waiting for their IFR clearance even in VFR conditions at the airport, blocking all the GA aircraft waiting in the mandatory run up area. I'm not a fan of Surf Air as they have disrupted what has been a very active program of positive community involvement where most residents had perceived the airport in a positive light.

Wow - I was unaware of the negative GA atmosphere caused by surf air at SQL.  I know the residents noticed it (probably the same dozen or so who always complain) but the fact that the pilots are not curteous to other GA aircraft is poor pilotage and unacceptable.

Thanks for the info!

 

-Seth

 

 

[Bennett]

Seth, The complaining parties are a bit different this time. Even though KSQL has an instrument approach (two to be technical- although along the same path), few GA pilots use it since there is usually decent VFR weather at the airport, and pilots just cancel IFR close to the airport. Surf Air, however, uses the approaches extensively no matter what the weather, and they have been waiting for IFR clearances, rather than taking off VFR, and picking up their clearances in the air, away from the airport/s. This puts them over a different set of homes, and as I mentioned, wealthier and more politically astute, homeowners. These PC -12s are very noisy, especially down low, and at at high power settings. These folks are not the usual few complainers - and a lot of us are sympathetic to their real complaints. In fact at the Board of Supervisors meetings some of the board members said that GA at KSQL was not a problem, and that our noise abatement procedures (Rwy 12) were helpful and appreciated. Everyone seemed to acknowledge that Surf Air was the problem, but to change the situation, the new rules would undoubtedly impact GA, and especially the flight schools on the airport.

[Mcoyne34]

I believe they're required to be IFR if flying paying customers. I've heard that somewhere along the way during my career. Can't depart VFR and pick up clearance in air and can't cancel IFR until landing assured. 

[Bennett]

I believe they're required to be IFR if flying paying customers. I've heard that somewhere along the way during my career. Can't depart VFR and pick up clearance in air and can't cancel IFR until landing assured. 

Interesting in that the temporary route used by Surf Air to KSQL does not comply with either of the FAA published approaches.

[Bennett]

By the way, Surf Air is not a part 121 operation. I believe they are under part 135.

[aviatoreb]

Just now, Bennett said:

By the way, Surf Air is not a part 121 operation. I believe they are under part 135.

That's interesting - it must push the limits of what 135 means.

[N9453V]

SurfAir can operate either VFR or IFR under Part 135. They just have to operate in accordance with their SOP's... if it requires them to keep the IFR to the ground and get the clearance before departure even in VMC conditions, that can and should be changed and approved by the FAA.

I used to be based at SQL and remember what a pain it was waiting for an IFR release on the ground.

11 minutes ago, aviatoreb said:

That's interesting - it must push the limits of what 135 means.

Not really. 135 covers most non-scheduled charter operators and non-jet scheduled commuters with up to 9 passengers seats. Good examples of this are Southern Airways Express which operates 208's and Sun Air Express (just purchased by Southern) that operates PA31's.

-Andrew