SIX FLIGHTS OF FANCY

01 COMMERCIAL ISN’T THE ONLY WAY TO FLY

Imagine wrapping up a visit to New York City by heading to a small airport on the city’s outskirts. There, you breeze through the single terminal and immediately board a 10-seat Falcon 2000 jet for a flight back home with a handful of other travelers. Through an app, you’ve already booked a seat for the following week on a similar type of flight to another city. Though a life of private jets and line-free airports sounds like a luxury for the global elite, you are not among them. Instead, you’re paying a moderate amount for a subscription to a private-jet club.

Flying private has traditionally required the enormous expense of either buying or chartering an entire plane. While fractional-ownership companies like NetJets pioneered the idea of saving money by sharing planes, a slew of new startups are opening up the experience to an even wider swath of travelers. One of the most promising is the three-year-old JetSmarter, founded by Sergey Petrossov and backed by the likes of Jay Z and the Saudi royal family. The company takes advantage of all the wasted inventory in private aviation: Planes sit idle between charters, or fly empty after delivering passengers. Petrossov reasoned that