Flapper, a regional leader in air charter contracting technology, celebrates today (06.07) its XNUMXth customer worldwide. To mark the date, co-founder and CEO, Paul Malicki, surprised the enger with a personalized souvenir before escorting him to board at the general aviation airport in Rio de Janeiro. The football-themed gift chosen was specially crafted based on the customer's flight history, which included on-demand charters to the Copa Libertadores finals.
The company, in addition to celebrating the important milestone of 30 customers served, also achieved growth of 320% in the last two years. “We are very happy with these numbers, after all we operate in a very restricted air charter market and we are experiencing a unique moment of expansion of services for both business and leisure travelers,” said Malicki.
Headquartered in Brazil with local operations in South America, Mexico, Florida and Portugal, Flapper launched in 2016, initially as a pay-per-seat helicopter booking app. The startup quickly moved to incorporate a full air charter offering, including private jets, corporate jets and turboprops.
Today, the rotorcraft segment s for just over 6% of revenues, with the core business focused on international chartering of private jets and brokering the purchase and sale of aircraft. Paul Malicki recalls the early days of the company and how it revolutionized the segment by showing itself to be a technology-based alternative in a scenario where the manual charter booking process still prevailed.
“The initial idea was to focus on introducing the sharing economy in the poor and conservative Latin American executive aviation market. It was during the acceleration program with ACE Ventures that we researched and found that no company in the world has profitably operated shared flights on large-scale business aircraft,” recalls Malick. According to him, at that time the traditional executive aviation charter was about to be digitalized and the first disruptors appeared in the US market.
“While we continued to offer limited-seat flights, our focus shifted to the UHWNI (Ultra-High Net Worth Individual) segment and that has led us to where we are today, with the average ticket exceeding $30. What hasn't changed over all these years is that a typical charter flight still requires an average of 20 emails before it can be confirmed. The Flapper application simplifies this process, reduces bureaucracy and increases transparency”, summarizes the CEO.
More than 1.700 aircraft with up-to-date maintenance and safety certifications are available on the Flapper platform. A dedicated team called “Aircraft Hunters” actively seeks out new commercial jets, turboprops and helicopters, including those operating under RBAC 135 (air taxi) and RBAC 121 (commercial aircraft) certificates. Interested operators usually receive a personal visit from the local or regional sales team before their inventory is entered into the system.
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Street: Flapper
