Reservations Will Be Suspended As Of Monday, December 23

Open Airplane, which was designed to make it easier to rent an airplane, and FlyOtto, which matched passengers with pilots traveling to their destination, are shutting down as of Monday, December 23.

Founder Rod Rakic writes on medium.com that the concept of the business was to make it as easy to rent an airplane as it is to rent a car, and to take the hassle and expense out of renting an airplane. "Spending half a day and hundreds of dollars to get checked out to fly the same model of an aircraft we fly at home always seemed silly, and thousands of pilots we surveyed told us they would fly more if such a service existed," he wrote.

Open Airplane began operation in 2013 with some 5,000 pilots signed up to get updates on the program. The network grew to include more than a hundred locations, with hundreds of aircraft available to rent across the US. At last count, 67% of the pilots who joined the service had an OpenAirplane operator based within 25 nautical miles from their home.

But at the end of the day, Rakic says they found that it’s tough to get pilots off the couch and into the cockpit, and too few pilots took to the skies to make the operation sustainable.

Much the same held true for FlyOtto. The data collected by the business showed that getting to sustainability would require much more capital than they first assumed.

Rakic says that their team will continue to man support channels through December 29th.

FMI: Source report