FlyHouse claims its app will revolutionise an antiquated charter system with speed and transparency, and its new FriendShare feature is now adding “community”

An on-demand charter app claims it can deliver a selection of charter aircraft in just 30 seconds. If the potential charterer lets the “reverse auction” run for 60 minutes, he or she can watch the price drop on their phone screens, as different aircraft owners bid against each other for the trip. The FlyHouse app, the private-aviation firm claims, eliminates traditional middlemen such as charter brokers that can take a much longer time to find available aircraft and sometimes operate in an opaque manner.

“We’re bringing clarity, community, and flexibility to an industry that has often felt impersonal,” said FlyHouse CEO Jack Lambert in announcing today’s addition of the FriendShare feature to the app. “This is shared luxury, reimagined.”

The app’s latest feature is a novel way to organise friends, business colleagues and family members, taking a leaf from social-media platforms by creating groups for different trips and shared interests.

“We’ve removed the friction from private aviation by making it super easy,” says Sanford Michelman about the new feature. FlyHouse’s founder whips out his phone during a zoom call, focusing on the FriendShare feature, to set up a charter flight. One of his favorite words during the demo is “frictionless,” meaning the process is straightforward, fast and transparent. With a few clicks on his iPhone, he has created a new group for a flight from Las Vegas to Van Nuys, L.A.’s primary business-aviation airport. In less than two minutes, Michelman has booked a private jet between the two cities.

Michelman’s own profile includes an F1 Group, LA to Cabo trip, several golf groups and even a Pittsburgh Steelers fan clique for business colleagues that are Steelers fans. “For the first time in private aviation, you can create a group and trip exactly as you want without going through a broker or, more typically, a WhatsApp group,” he says. Once one member creates a trip, they can invite others in the group, or if there are not enough takers, they can offer individual seats to the “public,” or the 40,000 individuals who have downloaded the app and are now on the platform.

Other apps from jet-card and on-demand charter providers promise fast, seamless experiences, but FlyHouse uses proprietary technology on the backend rather than the human labor typically employed to find and book a private flight. Most brokers cull through listings of potential charter aircraft on the third-party site Avenode, and contact every potential charter aircraft. Instead, FlyHouse built its automated platform partly from its June 2024 acquisition of JetASAP, an app for charter bookings, along with its own developments. The app has a pre-loaded directory of jet operators vetted for safety, with prices for any given trip already in the system.

Initially, says Michelman, FlyHouse set up an hour-long booking process. But the public’s demand for instant results prompted it to reduce the wait time to 30 seconds. “You have the option of pushing the booking window out to an hour and you can watch the prices drop as the jet owners bid for business,” he says.

Prices for different jets are displayed across the screen. Users can use filters that include pricing, jet size and type, age of aircraft and others. On the Las Vegas to Van Nuys sample flight, for instance, Michelman’s preferences for the seven-seat jet included limiting it to five passengers for extra space. Once five were signed up, he pushed submit and the app booked the flight, automatically deducting a share of the deposit from each passenger’s account. The demo’s only stressful moment was Michelman making sure his ops center knew he was not planning to actually charter the flight.

“From the consumer’s perspective, nobody is picking the plane for me and I have a wide selection of planes in real time,” says Michelman. “This lets us take the slack out of the system as brokers and management companies are artificially driving up the price of a charter. And that process can take two or three days.”

At the moment, there are about 100 FriendShare groups on the app, most devoted to specific trips or activities. With today’s launch of the feature, that number is expected to grow quickly. “This is not about the transaction, but about the memories made along the way,” says Lambert.

This story was first published on Robb Report USA. Featured photo by Getty Images