Following its $128 million raise last month, and acquisition of Travel Management Company with 24 light jets over the summer, Wheels Up has made a tech buy.
Wheels Up has acquired Avianis Systems, LLC, for an undisclosed amount. It comes just six weeks after raising $128 million in a Class D Equity Round, giving the New York-based private aviation membership company a billion-dollar valuation. Corporate Jet Investor first reported the deal ahead of its Revolution. The aero conference is being held today and tomorrow in San Francisco.
According to its website, Avianis provides a comprehensive platform for managing a complete flight operation in a single system. In its pitch to its B2B customers, it claims, “This enables a more holistic and cyclical view of the entire business that allows you to stay in touch with every detail of your business in one web-based platform.”
Wheels Up CEO Kenny Dichter told Corporate Jet Investor,” We have been looking at lots of tech companies to help accelerate the development of our digital platform,” adding, “Booking a private jet should be as easy as booking a car with Uber or booking a home with Airbnb.”
Daniel Tharp, managing director of Avianis, says its technology will help streamline behind-the-scenes communications with all the stakeholders involved in delivering a private flight.
In a press release, Wheels Up said it is “making significant investments in technology that will develop new functionality to help private aircraft operators digitize and streamline their services, allowing them to benefit from tools that simplify and speed up task completion via post-booking automation; calculate real-time pricing, feasibility, and availability; and create new revenue streams through access to additional flight demand at scale.”
Beyond Wheels Up, Dichter says Avianis will continue to offer its flight management software as a stand-alone solution to its existing and future customers.
“In private aviation, change is a fact of life,” says Eric Jacobs, the chief financial officer of Wheels Up. Avianis will streamline post-booking automation.
Currently, after members book a flight via its app, they can call, text, or email member services to add catering, say they are running late, add or subtract passengers, or change any aspects of the booking.
In the future, members will be able to do it all via the app if they prefer. For Wheels Up, it will automate the post-booking process, making it more convenient for its users.
Per Marthinsson, executive vice president of Avinode, a B2B resource for charter brokers, says a typical charter booking involves more than 100 emails and phone calls and up to 42 touch points on the backend.
After acquiring Travel Management Company in June, Wheels Up now owns 119 aircraft (a mix of King Air 350i, Hawker 400XP, Citation Excel/XLS, and Citation types). However, it wants to expand instant access for its 6,000 members to more third-party aircraft.
The Wheels Up Charter Marketplace already has a network of “safety-vetted and verified operators with more than 1,000 aircraft,” Dichter says, adding, “Avianis already has great operators, and we want to add more operators with our open platform and match them with the flight demand driven by our members.”
“The digital consumer experience we want to deliver requires that our supply-side becomes much more tech-enabled. This is a lesson I have learned in other industries, and it certainly applies to business aviation. A winning digital marketplace platform enables consumers and operators to come together through sophisticated technology and rich data,” says Dan Crowe, chief information officer of Wheels Up, who previously served in similar positions with Weight Watchers and Autotrader.com.
Alisdair Whyte, editor of Corporate Jet Investor, wrote about the deal, “The new battleground for business jet charter is not about owning planes. It is about platforms. It is not just Wheels Up; Directional Aviation acquired PrivateFly in 2018, and Vista Global bought Jetsmarter in March.”
It has been a busy year for Wheels Up. In August, after announcing the additional financing, it launched a guaranteed-availability, capped-hourly-rate super-midsize program.
Earlier this year, it launched Wheels Up Connect, a new membership program targeting the jet-sharing market. It also added a fixed-rate light jet program.
Dichter has said that, in addition to expanding its share of the full aircraft charter market, he believes the company has significant growth potential by tapping into members who fly privately under 10 hours per year. He estimates that around 100,000 U.S. high-net-worth customers and companies use private aviation regularly.
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