Company Performance Metrics
Bill Herp: Chief Executive Officer, Founder
Linear Air Taxi has built the first online marketplace connecting regional travelers frustrated with deteriorating airline service and tedious driving with approved commercial operators of 3-8 passenger technically advanced air taxi aircraft. As of fall 2018, the company represents over 2,500 air taxi aircraft across the US, Canada and the
Caribbean. Early on, the company entered into key partnerships with meta travel search sites Kayak and Hipmunk, demonstrating significant top of funnel demand and favorable customer acquisition cost. Since then, the company has invested in extending its demand generation capabilities to legacy reservation systems used by the airlines to sell through online and traditional travel agents. These include Amadeus, SABRE and Travelport, dramatically increasing the company's top of funnel capabilities. Linear Air Taxi’s business model is similar to other participants in the shared economy in that it owns the technology platform, and its operating partners own the aircraft.
Air taxi supply is fragmented and underutilized. The traditional booking process for air taxis is difficult, manual and inefficient. Linear Air's technology pioneered the provision of information on air taxi flights over an online platform to enable real time booking, fare quotes, secure payments, and customer support. Linear Air has also been successful in getting air taxi flights listed on travel sites such as Kayak and Hipmunk, and now, the systems used by the airlines to distribute through online and traditional travel agents. The technology platform provides many benefits for air taxi operating partners as well. Primary uses of additional funding will be development of a mobile platform, expansion of demand generation marketing activities, and addition of features to benefit the company's air taxi operating partners, including the opportunity to participate in the nascent Urban Air Mobility market for ultra-short hops of 20-100 miles.
Two of the principals, Bill Herp, CEO, and Bart Littlefield, SVP of Operations and Business Development, have had successful exits from venture backed companies and significant travel tech experience. Bill founded online marketing technology provider e-Dialog , which was sold for $157 million, and Mr. Littlefield has led and been a member of the executive team of a number of travel tech companies, including e-Travel, which was acquired by Oracle and subsequently Amadeus.
