Originally Posted by
JimboInMCO
Can you imagine checking in for a jumpseat only to be bumped by a charter bubba? I say this as a former charter guy myself.
I think this thread should also clarify some distinctions. There are many 135s that actively participate in and contribute to CASS: Boutique, Cape Air, Mokulele, JSX, Contour to name a few.
These are essentially airlines... they have commuters, have recip jumpseat agreements, have OAL jumpseaters...but most importantly, they’re scheduled.
I get the idea of jumphub but I don’t see it crossing into 121 or scheduled 135 at all. It’s just an empty leg advertising service from what I can gather.
Amongst unscheduled 135s? Sure! But it absolutely does not solve a problem on the scheduled 135/121 side of the house. I cannot imagine a CASS carrier even agreeing to anything close to this with a non-CASS carrier. Too easy to abuse.
Further, looks like the pilots have to pay to participate?? That’s about where the show and conversation stops entirely in my opinion. Just join and participate in an empty legs group on Facebook for free at that point.
In the words of Mr. Wonderful, I’m out.
This is a quality product with every detail thought out. It has been built around CASS, Non-CASS, security procedures already in use, automatic notification to captains, and jumpseaters of identities and jumpseat procedures, operators can customize their procedures, manual revisions, liability protection for operators. I could go on. So no we aren't just a empty leg clearing house, we dont make any commissions etc. this is just to encourage use - if an empty leg or cargo flight is entered already the operator may as well market it also, the reality is most empty legs will still go empty to their intended destination. 30-40 percent of al charter flights are repo legs- that's a lot!
It costs a lot of money to put this program together and maintain the system, in order to encourage operators to participate we have kept the cost low for them as there are far too many software companies sticking it to the operators already. I think CASS starts at $800 per month for up to 50 pilots.
We charge a small fee to the pilots that actually want to benefit from this, it is no different than your company enrolling in the KCM program and having the pilots pay if they want one, many charter companies do this already.
Operators can cover this for their pilots should they so desire but the idea of keeping operator accounts very inexpensive is to get more operators in the system, which in turn means more options for pilots.
We already have a charter operator in the system who is a CASS carrier, they can accept non CASS pilots and are glad to do so, jumpseaters can be treated as passengers and vetted appropriately. Only pilots who are added to the system by their approved operators can access the system so there is very little chance of abuse - this is exactly how CASS is run.
We've hashed out every situation and the software handles it one way or another.
Thanks for the feedback