Unlocking the Skies: Introducing Vaunt – Volato’s Answer to the Empty Leg Problem

In the ever-evolving realm of private aviation, Vaunt is determined to address a persistent issue of inefficiency and missed revenue opportunities: the empty leg. Vaunt is a sister company of Volato, a fractional aircraft ownership and charter company.

Fractional owners, quarter-share investors (quarter-share is a fractional owner — just the percentage is variable), and even private jet owners all encounter a dilemma upon arriving at their destination: either what to do with an aircraft sitting idle at that destination or how to manage the dead-head leg back to the home airport.

Private owners often face the choice of leaving their aircraft at the destination, incurring the expenses of their pilots and possibly other crew members while they conduct business or vacation. Alternatively, they might send their pilots home via commercial flights, only to have the crew travel back for the flight home. Only a few can afford the considerable expense of sending the aircraft back empty.

Floating fleet operators like NetJets or Volato grapple with a similar predicament. However, they lack the luxury of letting their aircraft sit idle at the destination, as every aircraft not in flight equates to lost revenue, and rarely is a customer ready to depart from the same location the plane landed, necessitating repositioning the aircraft with empty seats.

Operators have tried various systems to match passengers with empty legs and lessen the sunk cost of repositioning flights, but these attempts have yet to generate a net gain.

As Volato fine-tuned its nascent fractional program with HondaJet’s Elite series, it encountered the age-old issue of paying for empty legs. Branded as a disruptor in the fractional jet business, Volato strategically leveraged its technological expertise by establishing a sister company dedicated to addressing this problem — Vaunt.

Vaunt’s app is free to join, offers a yearly membership starting at $1,000, and requires no additional financial commitments for the year – for comparison, a typical retail flight hour for a HondaJet is $5,000-$6,000.

After joining, you can add your name to a waitlist for empty-leg flights. Your priority on the waitlist depends on several factors: your tenure as a Vaunt member, your most recent Vaunt flight, any carbon offsets you’ve purchased, referrals to other members, and whether you’ve been a no-show on previous occasions.

During this year’s NBAA-BACE event, I had the privilege of speaking with Nicholas Cooper, Vaunt’s President and Co-Founder of Volato.

“We view Vaunt as an independent entity from Volato, but with shared interests in enhancing private jet travel access and sustainability,” Cooper revealed. “Vaunt was designed for those who aspire to experience private jet travel but lack the means.”

“In the era of influencers, we see an opportunity for people to enjoy the privileges of private jet travel and elevate their travel experience beyond traditional commercial flights,” Cooper emphasized.

When asked about the absence of surcharges for actual flights, Cooper responded, “We want to provide our customers with a seamless experience after joining Vaunt. We don’t want them to have to deal with that decision of making an incremental additional payment. By being a Vaunt customer, they’re already onboard — the next step is finding their flight.”

The term “Vaunt,” originally meaning to boast or praise, was chosen as a brand name because it embodies the aspirational goals of the social media influencer era. Vaunt seeks to tap into the desire to share selfies while boarding a private jet on social media platforms while filling repositioning flights.

With a $1,000 annual membership, you can fly yourself and up to three additional passengers for free. However, there are a few important caveats.

Booking a Vaunt flight implies being ready to depart within 1-2 days, with no long-range planning options. The app lists 20 available flights at this writing, ranging from one to two days in advance, with half heading to popular or major city destinations. Since these flights are one-way, specifically for repositioning their aircraft, Vaunt suggests members purchase commercial return flights if their travel plans are round-trip.

Even if you bid for a flight, there’s no guarantee you’ll secure it. Consequently, plans for rental cars, transportation, accommodation, and more must remain in flux until flight confirmation.

If weather or mechanical issues lead to a canceled flight, it won’t impact a Vaunt member’s status.
If you join a flight waitlist and decide it no longer works for you, you may cancel your request without penalty. If you are confirmed as the passenger for that flight and don’t cancel or contact Vaunt, your bid clout drops because Vaunt sees no-show cancellations as “harming the ecosystem.”

Another challenge for operators trying to fill empty legs is the unpredictability of the aircraft owner’s plans. If an owner decides to alter their flight or arrangements, it may result in the need to bump a standby customer. It remains to be seen how such situations will be handled if a priority owner reclaims an empty-leg flight booked by a Vaunt customer.

Vaunt has garnered over 1,500 sign-ups for their service, though the number of members who have enrolled at the current membership rate remains undisclosed. This service is a tech-savvy, low-friction effort to address the issue of empty legs, and it’s likely to see increased utilization as Vaunt is exploring working with other operators and fractional partners to add their empty-leg inventory to the Vaunt platform.

Suppose Vaunt can fine-tune its app and API and establish itself as the first choice for other fractional operators to maximize their empty legs. In that case, it will undoubtedly have reason to boast about overcoming the persistent challenge of empty legs.