Flight Options Cuts Staff

Flight Options, a fractional operator based in Cleveland, Ohio, has laid off about 200 workers across the country, including about 75 pilots, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on Wednesday. The company blamed high fuel prices and overall economic conditions for a reduction in demand over the last few months, and said in a statement that “we anticipate that prevailing economic conditions will continue.”

Pilots for the company joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters two years ago, but no contract is yet in place, the Plain Dealer reported. Some pilots complained that the job cuts were not based on seniority. The company said “productivity” drove the decisions, but some pilots said union activists were targeted. Flight Options operates a fleet of over 130 aircraft, including the Hawker 400XP, Hawker 850XP, Citation X and Embraer Legacy.

The company was founded in 1998, and in 2005, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon. In 2007, the company was acquired by H.I.G. Capital LLC, a global private equity firm.

Source: AVweb

Online Charter Booking System Launched

It was about 11 years ago that Alaska Airlines took the first online flight booking and now most of us arrange our aluminum tube travel that way. Booking private charters is naturally more complicated but CharterX says it’s achieved a software breakthrough called RealQuote that allows customers to book conveniently online with launch operators Segrave Aviation and its affiliate Pegasus Elite. “There have been a variety of roadblocks that have prevented the air charter industry from realizing the time and cost efficiencies that e-commerce has provided commercial travelers for the past decade,” said CharterX President Jim Betlyon. “It’s been a pleasure working with Segrave over the past several months to overcome these obstacles and deliver e-commerce capability to our joint customers.”

The company says RealQuote “bypasses manual, time-intensive quoting and booking processes; it delivers true e-commerce capability.” Charter operators receive trip requests electronically from air charter buyers and are able to respond directly with quotes that run through BART and CTA/FOS scheduling and quoting software used by most operators. Jim Segrave, the founder of Pegasus and Segrave, said online booking is one more way to improve efficiency. “Our ongoing investments in technology, e-commerce and digital business systems, continue to drive our company’s rapid growth,” he said.
Source – AVweb

“Real Quote streamlines the quoting process which allows us to deliver more accurate quotes in real time,” explains Kevin Godlewski, President of Executive Charter Services and Charter X customer.