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Wingly flight sharing site (merged)

In my opinion, making money is what makes Wingly wrong. They turn flight sharing into a business, which it should not be. They misinform people : “find the passengers or the pilots for the trips of your dreams” they say. On the contrary, they should warn passengers who know nothing about light aviation what it means to travel in a light aircraft, that it is very different from flying in an airline jet, and that for exemple flights can be cancelled or diverted at any time, even after take off if the weather is not good.

That’s because of such sites and people that flight sharing was considered a danger and a business by the DGAC.

Aerostop is a non profit site. It is completely free. Anyone can see the ads or add one for free. Why should the website earn money whereas the pilot can only share costs? And only misinformed people, people who do not know how unlikely it is to get an air hitch would be willing to pay to advertise a seat’s search. Letting people think otherwise is dishonnest.

With aerostop, no money involved. All you may loose is 2 minutes of your time. That’s probably why I had so many ads from passengers looking for seats, ( 60%, the rest being divided between pilots (30%) and drivers (10%) offering seats).

Incidentally aerostop also ticks the 5 items of the wish list above.
I should create a version for cell phones. I’ll do it in the future if traffic comes back to what it was before the 2016 shut down.

I don’t mind competition. I earn nothing with aerostop, and therefore I loose nothing if it is not successful. But I’m really angry with wingly because they endangered the whole flight sharing process in France for one reason : making money out of something which should remain simply a way to share costs and one’s passion for flying.

Last Edited by TThierry at 10 Oct 07:42
SE France

TThierry wrote:

On the contrary, they should warn passengers who know nothing about light aviation what it means to travel in a light aircraft, that it is very different from flying in an airline jet, and that for exemple flights can be cancelled or diverted at any time, even after take off if the weather is not good.

That’s exactly what they do. They also verify pilot credentials and provide insurance coverage on top of the aircraft’s insurance.

TThierry wrote:

They turn flight sharing into a business, which it should not be.

Why should it be free? For this to work, it needs volume. A lot of pilots offering a lot of flights and a lot of pilots taking them up on their offers. To get there, marketing is required because they have to recruit passengers who would not know that such a facility exists. Marketing is very expensive. Wingly have managed to get a lot of press coverage in Germany, all major newspapers have featured them prominently, many TV features. Such a site only works if it is the only one in the market and to get there (i.e. kill all others), money is the way. If they succeed and the market is generally viable (which is not necessarily the case), they get a return on investment. Killing the competition is a required step. Recently Skyuber (UK focused) have closed down and Wingly are one step closer to achieving their goal. The main competitor in Germany flyt.club doesn’t seem to stand much chance. Once they take France, Germany and the UK, they should be virtually unstoppable.

GA is mostly without purpose these days and declining. Old men flying circles and being bored. Cost sharing adds purpose. In my view it’s a good thing.

It‘s a good thing if you like it. I understand that it‘s a great way for pilots to reduce the cost … but other than that i prefer flying alone than to take any responsibility for people i don‘t know.

Driving a lot i always used to stop for hitchhikers. Know the effect when you pick up one and regret it after two minutes? I had that a couple of times …

They are ~10 people working full time in an office in Paris, advertising to actively capture the market. It would be difficult to run as a non-profit.

Putting people in GA planes with PPL holders at the controls is a risk and passengers should be informed accordingly. Wether you take commission on it is in my opinion secondary. Risk is the same in both cases.

LPFR, Poland

GA is mostly without purpose these days and declining. Old men flying circles and being bored. Cost sharing adds purpose. In my view it’s a good thing.

That was certainly the view put forward to drive this EASA deregulation.

IMHO the “anti” views are also based on reasonable concerns.

Probably the biggest one is that most of the pilots fly only short local legs but the possibility of total (or almost total) cost recovery is going to dramatically change their mission profile, and cause accidents. Obviously no “national CAA” is going to state this concern openly, because they also oversee their PPL training system and in certain countries are heavily involved in the flying club scene It does not at all surprise me that the “anti” position was led by the DGAC.

Then you have this. And this one for anyone flying an N-reg…

They are ~10 people working full time in an office in Paris, advertising to actively capture the market. It would be difficult to run as a non-profit.

Yes; I don’t think one can blame Wingly for trying to make money out of pairing people up. That’s what internet dating has always done. Wingly take 15% plus £4 or some such. The issues, if any, are IMHO around the people offering the flights.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

TThierry wrote:

Aerostop is a non profit site. It is completely free. Anyone can see the ads or add one for free. Why should the website earn money whereas the pilot can only share costs? And only misinformed people, people who do not know how unlikely it is to get an air hitch would be willing to pay to advertise a seat’s search. Letting people think otherwise is dishonnest.

Personally, I would be very afraid of using a website such as Aerostop it does not look secure at all with information and while its free I have no idea since it looks like it has not evolved since the 90’s.

TThierry wrote:

With aerostop, no money involved. All you may lose is 2 minutes of your time.

If its only 2 mins of time I probably have no idea who I will be flying with. Moreover, it’s the first time I have ever heard of it so it does not do much for me to trust it. Good that I speak french but I wouldn’t know what this site is all about. It would be a strong no from me.
London Elstree Aerodrome, Denham Aerodrome Airport

CesnaSteve wrote:

I would be very afraid of using a website such as Aerostop it does not look secure at all with information

Which information? Yours? The only thing you need to advertise a trip is an email adress. Apart from that you’re free to give or not to give any information you want. You don’t have to create an account. No risk with your details.

I accept the critics regarding the site’s design. It was indeed created in the 90’ (almost: 2003) ;o)

loco wrote:

They are ~10 people working full time in an office in Paris, advertising to actively capture the market. It would be difficult to run as a non-profit.

That’s the problem. How can 10 people live from flight sharing? What should be the turnover? How many flights would be necessary?

SE France

How can 10 people live from flight sharing?

Only by burning lots of investors’ money A standard business model, actually… I know a guy who has done nothing since about 1990. Lots and lots of “businessmen” live purely off investors’ money, never producing a viable business. Each new investor’s share issue dilutes the value of the others’ holdings, eventually to the point where nothing short of a sale of the whole thing to [insert your favourite $100BN company] will generate a positive return on the investment, but this happens over years so the investor doesn’t lose much sleep over it because he wrote it off mentally years before. Eventually the founder dissolves it, and starts another one.

In 1987-1991 my then company had a sales office at Strasbourg. We had 2 guys there, on 20k + 50% French social security (employer’s NIC, in the UK) making it 30k each. Plus company cars. Plus the office.

That was 30 years ago… How much would a 10-person operation be burning today? It must be best part of €1M.

I cannot believe there is enough activity in European GA to finance such an operation in the long run, but it doesn’t matter because the only losers will be Wingly’s investors.

Achim’s point about Tinder may be spot on because while I would not advertise cost sharing nowadays (for reasons already posted) I did get into some aviation groups in the past (mainly to find people to fly with) only to find them populated by people who wanted to do pubs and dinners, and on one local meetup.com group there were tons of women looking for men

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

How can 10 people live from flight sharing?

I don’t think it’s 10 full time employees and it’s not only in Paris. The model is 15% of the ride share plus around 5 € per flight. If they handle 1,000 bookings (= seats) a month with an average of 80 €, then it’s 80 € * 1000 * 0.15 + 1000 * 5 € = 17 000 €. If it’s 10,000 seats at an average of 100 € per seat, it’s 190,000 € per month. That could be sustainable.

Peter wrote:

That was 30 years ago…

Yes but but not everyone doing business in France fails . Paris is probably the most active startup area in Europe. There are plenty of government funding programs (much more than in Germany), cheap office space and young guys don’t necessarily cost much. You can use students, pay in equity, etc. It’s quite amazing what is happening in France. I worked for nothing when I built my first company and my staff was so nerdy they neither knew what money was needed for nor what you can do with a “woman” so I got 90h for very little. Now we’re old and fat and saturated but also not working in low cost startups anymore

Once the platform is working, all you need is a computer and it will run all by itself generating income.

If it’s 10,000 seats at an average of 100 € per seat, it’s 190,000 € per month. That could be sustainable.

That’s about 100k potentially cost shared flights per year.

Now let’s throw into the air some figures on the total number of GA flights that actually go somewhere, and involve cost sharing in a year, in all of Europe. IOW, assume that Wingly will achieve a 100% penetration of all these flights.

Also…

not everyone doing business in France fails .

Paris is probably the most active startup area in Europe

are not mutually exclusive – see my previous post about startups invariably being “successful” for the founders

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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