Apply here to attend IGNITION: Transportation, an event focused on the future of transportation, in San Francisco on October 22However, late August saw significant volatility in the markets, and there are lingering concerns that the next recession is imminent.
VistaJet offers long-range private jet charters that subscription members can book, while XO allows instant booking for nonmembers, and booking shared flights, or requesting to fill an empty seat on an existing shared charter. JetSmarter does not own aircraft or operate flights, but its backend technology helped Vista Global develop XO, a unified online marketplace for the company.
While one concern would be that excess spending is reined in during a recession — so private jet use would be curtailed across the board — Flohr says that since founding VistaJet in 2004, the pattern he's seen is that users tend to move down a level. The obvious counterargument would be that, while VistaJet may be able to capture business from corporations and users looking to give up their owned jets, the loss of users at the lower end who go back to flying commercial would offset that."[Current VistaJet customers] may go to the XO marketplace and say 'I don't want to have a 200-hour commitment anymore, I only need to fly 80. I don't need a program, but let me fly XO," he said.
"I look at the data of what happened in 2008-2009, the European debt crisis in 2011...the 2012 Arab spring, the 2013-2014 Russian Ukrainian Crimea invasion," he said."We went through every single one of these crises, and what happened was that you see an acceleration of waste elimination." "Sixty-six hundred of that 7,000 are corporate airplanes, and the other 400 are spread between [the major subscription and on-demand charter companies]. So that's 6,600 we can still address in a downturn," he said.