Baron Aviation Launches the World’s most advanced booking platform for private jets – Book My Charters

A report by Baron Aviation, indicates the private jets market is witnessing tremendous expansion in non-metros which makes it confident of higher growth, to the tune of 30 percent, in the segment soon. Baron, a private jets brokering service provider, on Monday launched an online platform for both operators and users under the brand name of BookMyCharters.

Domestic private aviation business is set to gromulti-fold to Rs 5,000 crore by 2020 from Rs 1,800 crore in 2015, on the back of rising popularity for such services in non-metro markets, said a report.

Baron Chairman and Chief Executive Rajeev Wadhwa said his portal has already roped in 40 private jets from 12 operators and one can book a plane in 60 seconds with complete transparency in pricing.

The 12 operators which have enlisted with Baron online service include Club One Aviation, Jindal Aviation, Supertech, Raymond  , Imperial Air and Orbit Aviation, he said, adding by the month-end, there will be 10 more planes on the site.

Wadhwa said of these 40 planes, 75 percent are registered in Delhi, which is the capital of private aviation business in the country.

The air charter space is dominated by offline operators and agents and the move towards creating an online platform is aimed at countering the inefficiencies of an opaque system, Wadhwa said.

Mumbai, despite being the corporate capital, does not have much scope as the city airport is the costliest in the world when it comes to aviation charges which is nothing less than Rs 1 lakh for a day, he said.

Asked about his firm's commission from each deal, he said it will be 2-3 percent of the booking amount, which is fixed by the jet's owner.But he refused to divulge if this is lower that a manual booking or not. Wadhwa said the domestic private jet market has 126 operators with 194 planes, but 79 of them just have 1-2 jets.

He said while global flying average per plane is 800- 1000 hrs a year, in India, this is only 300-400 hrs but expressed the hope with his online booking venture this can go up to 600 hrs over the next few years. Wadhwa said the technology behind the platform is proprietary and patents for this innovation have been filed.

Asked about the volume of incremental business expected with this venture, the Baron CEO said he sees 30-40 percent of current air charter users migrating to the platform over the next one year, which in turn can boost the market by 30 percent.

The fleet of aircraft that BookMyCharters offers ranges from the small Pilatus PC 1247, with a single turboprop engine to the Dassault Falcon 2000 twin-engine business jet. Concerns about the charter segment in India have persisted because of inadequate infrastructure and several regulatory hurdles that charter services face in order to function smoothly in the country.