To make bookings with helicopter and light airplane firms, the client must contact or e-mail the operator in 90% of the situations. This means they are restricted to office hours, and in order to convey aircraft availability, operators and clients must interact by phone and/or email. This method of making reservations is time-consuming for both the operator and the customer. Furthermore, providing single seats in tiny aircraft creates a significant administrative burden for operators since they must manually arrange individuals in order to fill the aircraft, hence some only provide whole aircraft rentals.
MyAirSeat is an off-the-shelf completely digital booking solution for small and medium-sized businesses that operate helicopters and smaller aircraft. MyAirSeat’s software-as-a-service solution decreases administrative strain for these businesses while also assisting them in increasing turnover by tapping into untapped possibilities. The technology is simple to integrate into an operator’s current website. The system is presently available in English, German, French, and Italian around the world.
The aviation sector is quite complicated. Even though an airplane has five passenger seats, due to aircraft performance constraints, not all five seats can be occupied during a trip. Furthermore, regulatory constraints, such as opening hours, apply. In order to comply with the performance standards and regulatory framework, an operator can limit the number of bookable passenger seats, establish separate availability time frames, and set rates per seat per aircraft in MyAirSeat. All flight planning is done by the operator using a calendar view. This is also where the system detects the aircraft’s availability in real time.
The administrative effort is currently being reduced by digitizing the booking process; no human interaction is required: a client may examine all available offers on the booking website, book the deal whenever an available place is available, and pay by credit card. Following the flight, the client is given a brief NPS (net promoter score) survey. It is critical for the operators to receive feedback on their service. It’s satisfying, it aids in the improvement of their services, and the testimonials may be published on their website.
The MyAirSeat team thinks that a simple and quick booking procedure has a big impact on the whole client experience. With the MyAirSeat-Booking System, the firm allows aircraft operators to give the end client an easy overview of all products, allowing the end client to simply compare offers, make bookings, and the client is notified via e-mail at every stage. So, regardless matter how busy the office is, every customer is handled the same manner.
In MyAirSeat, the firm has just added a gift voucher system. With an interactive interface, the next development project will allow clients to request specific excursions or flights (A to B). With the latter, the firm hopes to acquire insight into client behavior when requesting flights, since the MyAirSeat team envisions offering its technology to drone taxi operators in the future. When such services begin, they will be totally prepared.
Pioneer of MyAirSeat
Alexander Burger is MyAirSeat’s co-founder and CEO. Because of his father’s employment, Alexander got the opportunity to move to New Hampshire in the United States with his family when he was 17 years old. He attended high school and also learnt to fly helicopters. Before his first driving lesson, he got his first flight lesson. He obtained his commercial helicopter pilot’s license at the age of 18. He recalls the breathtaking flights over Boston Downtown and the Hudson River in New York. In his early twenties, he began flying commercial helicopters. It was the love of flying that drew together the additional business partners, Jakub Lajmon, a pilot with an IT background who is the CTO, and Oliver Wirz, who is also a pilot.
Alexander discovered that the burden for operators has increased owing to an increase in the number of clients and legal complexity through his own flying activities. Furthermore, many individuals do not come flying since they are only two people and cannot afford to hire the entire plane. So, basically, potential was squandered. So Alexander reasoned, why not create a software solution that frees up resources while also assisting in the extraction of untapped potential with single seats and by utilizing a multi-channel marketing idea. Streamlining the booking process frees up resources and allows staff to concentrate on duties that require human interaction and cannot yet be replaced by a digital technology. “We’re not trying to eliminate humans at the workplace, but rather complement them with a supportive system in order to increase efficiency and overall turnover,” asserts Alexander.
One aspect of this sector that Alexander appreciates is the opportunity to assume a lot of responsibility as a young person. He graduated from Zurich University of Applied Sciences with a Bachelor of Science in Aviation and a Master of Science in Business Administration – Major Marketing (ZHAW). He belongs to the honor organization Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS). He also completed an extracurricular course in Digital Business and Technologies at Singapore’s SMU. In the Swiss Air Force, he has the rank of First Lieutenant.
