City Hopper Airlines - The pitch

Air travel is unnecessarily stressful. You have to plan to get to the airport two or three hours before your flight and end up waiting by the gate all because you can’t afford to miss the flight.

Relax, with City Hopper you don’t have to worry if you arrive half an hour early or late. City Hopper is constantly running flights between pairs of cities, so it’s not a big deal to miss a flight. In fact, you don’t even get a seat assignment until you are ready to fly.

City Hopper Airlines - The growth potential

The airline industry is a huge. For example, Delta last year had tens of billions in revenue. City Hopper Airlines could grow to be about ¼ the size of Delta.

City Hopper Airlines - The fun part

The are two fun challenges with City Hopper. First, City Hopper must find ways to reduce waste in the travel process. For example, the way we seat people on the plane is inefficient. If you line people up in an intelligent fashion, then you could board more quickly and get everyone on their way.

The second challenge is to design the monetization scheme such that all of the incentives are aligned properly and there are no ways to ‘game’ the system. The motivation for this idea is that air travel really isn’t economic sometimes.

City Hopper Airlines - The monetization

This is an airline, so the revenue is from ticket sales and perhaps a few upgrades. City Hopper would be a high-end, but densely packed airline. If a flight isn’t full, people can pay extra to have an empty seat next to them and even more for an empty row. This allows for a way to partially recoup some money on a less than full flight.

City Hopper Airlines - The idea

Having a locked-in time for take-off that you purchase weeks or months in advance of your travel date can be inconvenient.  If there are frequent flights between two places, such as SFO and LAX, the seats travelling between these destinations could be reimagined as a market, and plane travel could more easily fit your schedule or you could save some money on flights.

You would first reserve a time window of a few hours for take-off of your flight. Several hours before that time window, an app on your phone or an email would ask you if you still plan to fly at that time. You could then head to the airport whenever is most convenient for you that day, knowing that if you arrive outside of your reserved window, you may have to pay extra to get onto a flight that is leaving at that time.  On your way to the airport, your phone updates City Hopper with your location. When you get to the terminal, your phone lets you know which flights are coming up if there would be any additional costs or any rebates for those flights.

The key idea here is that you can arrive at the airport any time and the cost to get onto the next flight to your destination depends on how many other people are also trying to get onto that flight. So if there are more people at the terminal than there are seats on the plane, then those who are in a hurry could potentially pay extra to get onto the next flight. If other people are willing to wait, then they could get a partial refund on their tickets. One could also get a partial refund if they arrive in time for flights outside of their time window that are not full. You could see these potentially-underbooked flights and the discount to take them in the City Hopper app.  If you do not choose to pay extra to leave sooner or get money back to leave later (or much earlier), then you will be placed on a flight by the end of your reserved time window for the base price that you already paid.

City Hopper would be an airline that runs many small flights between cities that are 300 to 600 miles apart. Having many flights makes it possible for people to take a half hour or hour delay in their travel instead of two or three hours.

If allowable by the air traffic control, having small flights would allow for the flexibility to leave a little earlier or later than initially planned. An important consequence is that there is no need build in buffer time where resources are idle. If the plane is ready early, fly earlier.

City Hopper Airlines - The motivation

Air travel sucks. You have to plan to get to the airport far in advance of your flight to account for lines to check bags and get through security. It’s also not easy to catch an earlier or later flight if you want to adjust your schedule.