As a Russian-based service, it helped evacuate the rich from Miami

Photo: Stephen Yang

Approaching florida coast Hurricane Irma provoked multi-kilometer traffic jams not only on highways. The queue formed even on the charters at the airport of Miami. The service for booking tickets to private JetSmarter aircraftwhich was founded by Moscow-born Sergei Petrossov in Florida, had to add additional flights to meet the increased demand for rental charter flights.

“JetSmart is committed to ensuring the safety of customers living in South Florida. We are opening a number of urgent flights that will fly from South Florida to New York,” said the company’s CEO Sergei Petrossov.

The cost of tickets for 8 additional flights to New York started from $ 2900. One-way urgent private flights to New York cost from $ 14 000. Previously booked shuttle tickets, in which 3 seats, cost $ 6000. Some tickets reached $ 50 000, but passengers could fly to any destination without being limited to New York.

In addition to New York, additional tickets to destinations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Orlando were in demand among passengers.

As previously wrote ForumDaily, project JetSmarterfounded by a native of Moscow, Sergei Petrossov, organizes budget flights on private jets. The project is often called the 'Uber for aircraft ”, allowing program subscribers to occupy empty seats in private jets. Startup JetSmarter was founded in 2012 year and has already managed to gain fame, as well as popular investors, including the royal family of Saudi Arabia and musician Jay Z.

According to the information on the website of the company, the flight order is carried out through a special application for smartphones. There are three service categories available in iOS and Android service applications: JetDeals (simple booking of flights in one direction or another), JetShuttle (ordering one seat in a multi-seat private plane with a previously defined route) and JetCharter (fully personalized choice of route, direction and type aircraft).

Monthly use of the service JetSmarter is $ 800, or $ 9 000 annually with no limit on the number of flights in the US, plus $ 3 000 as an admission fee.

CEO and founder of JetSmarter Sergey Petrossov. Photo: JetSmarter

Note that the creator of "aviataxi" is the son of immigrants from Russia. Sergey Petrossov's parents immigrated to the United States when he was 4. Petrossov had several IT projects in the USA and Russia.

He founded a technology project - LiveContact, aimed at Western Europe and offering sites to organize customer support through chat, audio and video. Another of his startups, the Federal Distance Education System, was one of the first in the field of online education in Russia. But due to the bureaucratic processes in Russia, Petrossov handed it over to the state and left the project.

Even then, he used charter flights for flights, but the process of booking such flights, he said, was very long and complicated. A fax was used for this, which reminded the businessman of the “80's Exchange”. That is how the idea of ​​creating JetSmarter - “Uber for aircraft”, which brought real success to a businessman, appeared.

“The similarity between JetSmarter and Uber is that both services allow you to quickly and conveniently book a flight in a mobile application. With us you can do it in a few minutes, bypassing the chain of brokers, and fly away within a few hours. We calculate the availability of flights in real time, based on information directly from the airlines, ”said Petrossov.

According to the businessman, since the launch in 2013, the audience of the service has been growing by 15-20% every month, the number of flights booked through the JetSmarter app is over 10 thousand per year.

“Most often they fly in the so-called“ golden triangle ”- between Los Angeles, New York and South Florida. We focus on a wealthy audience, with a personal fortune of $ 100 thousand to $ 1 million, but in fact there are other users. I often say that we have one college student who bought a membership, breaking the installment into payments on two credit cards, ”said Petrossov.

The businessman admitted that, despite the fact that he grew up in the United States, he still did not break the connection with Russia and regularly visits his home country, where he has relatives and works with a subsidiary of 12 employees.

The company operates around the world, except for military zones or routes that are considered dangerous for flight. Until the end of 2017, JetSmarter plans to operate in 100 countries of the world.

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