The taxi-alternative Uber may have made it possible to make spur-of-the-moment decisions without having to worry about a ride, but air travel still requires a bit of planning and foresight. Or at least it used to before JetSmarter made its appearance in March 2013. The company's user-friendly app essentially allows you to hail a jet just like you would a car from Uber, making it easier than ever before to hop on a plane to Paris within just a few hours of booking.
CEO and founder of JetSmarter, Sergey Petrossov wanted to create a service that updated the old way of booking a private flight, bypassing brokers, paperwork, and the hassle of tracking down safety history for any specific aircraft. According to The Daily Beast, Petrossov ended up getting some of his friends in the charter business to share with him their companies' information—like flight schedules, prices, safety ratings, and handling fees—so he could store everything in the new system he was creating. The rest is pretty much history, with JetSmarter housing some 3,000 aircraft in its program (which has been downloaded over 200,000 times).
Acting as a personal concierge, the app helps hook you up with the perfect jet and route for your destination. The company isn't looking to actually enter into the world of air travel per say, instead choosing to remain more of a tech company and letting the charter companies they work with handle their own planes. And according to Petrossov, no request is too extreme. Someone asked for a flight from Ecuador through Malta and they made it happen, so whatever destination you have planned, it will probably work out just fine.
JetSmarter certainly isn't the only app-based service to offer this; PrivateFly is active in Europe and BlackJet uses a book-per-seat method that uses networking for clients. And of course, even road-based Uber has dabbled in private flights, like when they offered a temporary jet service for people heading to Cannes Film Festival.
