An airline company is offering the private jet experience at business-class prices — and it’s earning them loads of industry enemies.
JSX, a Dallas-based carrier, is exploiting a loophole in US Federal Aviation Administration regulations that might allow the corporate to sell single-seat tickets for scheduled charter planes for inexpensive prices and far quicker security checks.
“I spent months without sleep, just all the foundations, looking for ways why it couldn’t be done,” co-founder Alex Wilcox told Bloomberg.
While charter planes aren’t subject to the identical strenuous safety and security requirements as passenger planes with greater than nine seats, FAA rules prevent them from specifying flight times or cities or selling single tickets.
To beat the stringent rules, the entrepreneur created two firms that might work together: one makes flight schedules and sells tickets while the second flies the plane on specified routes at set times and dates.
The loophole also allows JSX to sell tickets at a much lower cost point than private jet competitors.
“Each person we talked to said, ‘No, you may’t do it,” Wilcox recalled.
“So we did it.”
JSX has earned love and adoration from frequent fliers who can enjoy the posh of skipping long Transportation Security Administration baggage-screening lines rather than bag swabs and weapon detectors.
The additional free time allows travelers the possibility to spend more time within the cities they’re exploring, or to attend extra meetings on a piece trip, Bloomberg reported.
That loophole, nonetheless, is what JSX’s competitors are targeting, claiming the corporate’s practices are unsafe.
“If you happen to’re going to be a scheduled carrier, whoever you might be, follow the foundations for a scheduled carrier,” Southwest Chief Executive Officer Bob Jordan said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“We’ve a long time of proof that accidents have significantly declined and safety has significantly improved. Just follow that standard.”
Doug Parker, former American Airlines chairman and CEO, told the outlet that carriers like JSX should beef up their counter-terrorism rules and be required to fulfill post 9/11 standards, like scanning photo IDs, limiting liquids on board and removing shoes during screenings.
“It’s a natural disaster waiting to occur,” he said. “We all know terrorists have their eyes set on business aviation and we’re giving them an ideal opportunity.”
The competitors’ complaints and JSX’s growing success may result in federal changes that might bring down the corporate’s modern business model.
The FAA reviewed its rules for public charter carriers like JSX got here “in light of recent high-volume operations” that “seem like offered to the general public as essentially indistinguishable from” business carriers.
The “size, scope, frequency and complexity” of public charter operations like JSX has “grown significantly over the past 10 years,” the agency wrote in an August filing.
Members of Congress and a few pilots’ unions have also pushed for tightened security measures, but JSX hired a lobbyist in Washington to face its ground.
“When someone points a gun at you, you are likely to hire bodyguards,” Wilcox said.