After stopping adding new customers at the beginning of the month, Sentient Jet is now trying to deal with the pain point of scrambling to secure supply at the last minute – a supply that sometimes isn’t there.
In an email to customers, the inventor of the jet card announced, “We are adding a High Demand Day definition to our program – for dates on or after November 8th, 2021- to further ensure the daily needs of our clients’ expectations and volume demand.”
It continues, “While we always guarantee a jet at the stated rate in your contract when a given day has reached a high concentration of flying, you will be asked to schedule your booking request on an alternative day or at an alternative time.”
The note says, “This is being implemented in an effort to provide the most predictable and best possible service in today’s environment. We have built our brand around the most rigorous screening and safety infrastructure in the jet card business. As such, we are committed to never prioritizing volume and capacity over quality, safety, and rigor.”
Sentient CEO Andrew Collins tells Private Jet Card Comparisons the move is not meant to be permanent.
A particular pain point for private flyers is changes and cancelations in the 24-to-48 hours leading up to departure.
The move is designed to give a higher level of schedule integrity as opposed to blanket blackouts.
Sentient secures flights three ways. They use a Flexjet operated fleet of aircraft retired from their sister company’s fractional program. It also charters aircraft from other operators for days and weeks at a time. It then buys on the spot market, flight-by-flight.
Flexjet needs all of its operational capacity. The spot market is short of capacity. So, one assumes Sentient is tying daily flight restrictions to the capacity it has available through its long-term charters.
Sentient changed its non-peak call-out from 10 hours to 24 hours in September. While it stopped accepting new members, it is allowing existing customers to renew.
One Sentient customer who wasn’t happy with the change, said, “At the end of the day, there are no other places I want to go, so hopefully this works. I guess this is the industry right now, or I should say a lot of industries.”
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