Innovative European air taxi outfit Blink has started relatively small – it operates four Cessna Citation Mustang very light jets (VLJs) from Farnborough airport 40km from central London.
The planes can accommodate up to four passengers and two pilots and are capable of ferrying a full complement from London to Berlin.
So far, so good, but there’s more to the company than that. Its co-founders, Peter Leiman (29) and Cameron Ogden (31), met at Harvard Business School and the idea grew from there. The pair were fortunate enough to source $30m-worth of funding from venture capitalists and other European investors back in 2007, prior to the dread credit crunch building up a head of steam.
Blink’s now thinking big. The company has a further 26 Cessna Citation Mustangs in the pipeline which, upon delivery, will make it the world’s largest operator of the aircraft.
This plane’s capabilities may be key to the whole project. Leiman says: ‘The aircraft is half the capital cost and 30 per cent cheaper to operate than the cheapest business jet.’
Blink has also recruited some impressive talent to fly and maintain its fleet, including four of BA’s most experienced training captains and the former chief engineer on Concorde.
Leiman points out the company has learned lessons from the low cost airline model, with high asset utilisation – his jets will be busy – and single fleet type, to make maintenance an easier task. ‘Our customers are the type of people who are looking for value for money and we can provide that,’ he adds.
A seat on a London to Paris flight with Blink costs £550 ($800) plus landing fees. If a plane is filled with colleagues all heading to a meeting then costs start to bear comparison with business class on a commercial flight. And, presumably, there are no issues with discussing sensitive matters onboard.
There’s more value to be had, Leiman adds, when you factor in the time-savings on offer with the service. Blink’s jets can use 600 airports in Europe, many of them small and many of them well placed for where people need to get to.
Ideal, he suggests, if your company has a regular need to get people to or from secondary cities – from, as he puts it, London to Eindhoven.
Since launch, Blink has flown over 300 customer groups ranging from employees of FTSE 100 corporations to individual entrepreneurs. With the increase of aircraft numbers and the growing flexibility this adds, the airline hopes to grow numbers to between 2,000 and 3,000 groups in 2009.
Providing the business traveller with value in straightened times, this could be one of the aviation success stories of the year.
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