JetSmarter to add desktop booking capability, and says business is fine despite lawsuits and complaints

JetSmarter is seemingly cutting a new path with paid flights and says the transition is going just fine

Despite at least two lawsuits and increasing member discontent, JetSmarter says business is booming in a press release issued today. The company said it is enjoying “triple-digit growth in seat bookings, as the company continues its momentum of dominating the private jet-sharing economy.” 

The by-the-seat scheduled private jet charter broker recently switched to a membership model that requires all paid flights, a change from the past when members paid their annual membership fee and enjoyed both free seats on scheduled private jet flights and the entire aircraft for empty legs at no charge. It also began allowing non-members to buy seats and start charters, albeit at higher rates.

In the release, JetSmarter says it has “experienced four-times month-over-month growth in the number of non-member seats booked on private jets since non-members were granted ability to access the services.” However, JetSmarter only announced it was allowing non-members to start booking seats on June 12, so at best it would be a single month over month comparison.

Separately, the company said JetSmarter’s seat bookings have grown by 116% year over year and shared flight frequency has also increased more than 20%. It says this growth is driven through on-demand flight creation where members and non-members alike can crowdsource flights on their own time.

The company says it offers more than 300 weekly shared flights with over and in a significant announcement said its app-based platform will soon be adding desktop booking capabilities to provide on-demand searching and booking flexibility.

Recently it offered a new elite $25,000 membership tier, however, we hadn’t covered it to date as the company did not respond to our questions about some apparently conflicting terms in the offer, specifically around which flights the $600 per hour rate cap applies to.