Eight months ago, French startup and application developer Moove launched its SaaS marketplace booking portal for business aviation applications. The focus? On leveraging the economy and efficiency of turboprop aircraft in a wide array of transportation solutions, beginning in the European Union.
Today, Paris-based Moove announced its next foray, which takes it to the U.S. market with use cases for flight departments in North America. In addition, it is expanding its capabilities to encompass empty-leg scheduling and on-demand fulfillment for European customers.
The web-based platform features a clean user interface designed to flex with the company’s future iterations. Right now, it provides real-time planning and dynamic pricing for operators to show to prospective clients, along with a soft pitch on the benefits of using personal and business aviation.
Growing the Market for Turboprops
FLYING spoke with founder Arthur Ingles regarding the company’s unique offering for business operators, as well as personal transportation. Ingles started the project following six years with Daher, finishing his tenure there leading strategy, marketing, communication, and TBM program direction in September 2021.
Ingles was motivated by the opportunity to not only support the current EU-based fleet of TBMs, Pilatus PC-12s, Beechcraft King Airs, and similar aircraft, but to grow the market by demonstrating to small and medium-sized businesses the utility of this class of aircraft for short-distance flights.
“We offer a platform in order for commercial operators to sell their flights, or manage their bookings, and we are targeting especially professional [flight departments]. We have developed the technology to help us better target managers and their teams so that we can fly efficiently with a private aircraft—specifically smaller ones, because particularly TBMs and PC-12s are a great asset to fly more economically than jets, reducing the environmental footprint of the business aviation. It’s a key topic in France and in Europe in general.”
Ingles recognized the disconnect between the products he strategized to bring to customers, and the utility they could provide beyond their traditional customer base: “I realized when I was at Daher,” he said, “that we [were] serving pilots mostly, owners. When you discuss with any CEOs of small or medium companies in France and Europe, 90 percent of them…don’t even know that general aviation exists, and they don’t even know that it’s a valuable economic option for them—especially when they want to develop their business somewhere where you don’t have a commercial [airline] schedule.”
Moove has focused on illuminating these efficiencies. “We developed a real-time benchmark technology,” said Ingles, “so you can calculate the time and productivity savings you can get out of a private flight versus your three-hour drive to Paris-CDG then the two connections to go into the north of Italy, whereas if you have chosen business aviation, it will have been just a one-hour flight with 10 minutes [drive.]”
Empty-Leg Genius
“We do both the SaaS solutions which enables corporate flight departments and commercial [on-demand] operators to sell and manage their flights,” said Ingles. “And also we’ve tried where there are no commercial operators, to develop shared ownership of TBM aircraft. Because, as you know, if you want to increase your market and be more competitive, repositioning flights are a big issue. Having aircraft based in regions where you don’t have any commercial operators is important.”
As Ingles mentioned, one key area where the efficiency breaks down lies in repositioning flights—the segments where the aircraft flies without passengers in order to pick up or drop off a primary user. If those segments can be monetized, they turn the wasted time, cost, and effort into an opportunity. On-demand and corporate operators globally are working to tap into selling these “empty-leg flights.”
Moove specifically targets the selling of empty-leg segments with a powerful, proprietary algorithm that captures segments flying nearby a route. This enables operators to offer a refined price for similar one-way flights to prospects, based on matching scores, and thereby increasing drastically the chance of selling their empty legs.
“We are starting in the U.S. with our SaaS offering,” for flight departments, said Ingles, with plans to expand into the on-demand markets.
