rob777

Hey, sure ! I took many shuttles / flights deals, the worst seat are definitly "sofa" seats, you're sharing it with 2 strangers and you're flying for hours in some very unconfortable seats, at a 90* angle from the normal seats and you're in front of strangers as well.

The other bad ones on the shuttles are the backs seats, horrible.. You don't have any legroom. You have more legrooms on premium economy flights..

phantom78

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to respond. Trying to weigh things and it is very helpful to hear from other's experiences.

YUL1941

Just saw in the app a new membership tier called ''Simple'' that include 2 free seats on empty legs and free seat on shuttles under 2h, all for only $5,000

Look like they need cash quickly !

T-15.01

not sure that expanding your service offering to a wider audience, at a lower cost, immediately means you "need cash" and/or "quickly". A few commercial air carriers recently introduced a class even beneath coach/economy (spare all those who elect to travel this way, a moment of silence! ).

United and Delta (UA/DL) have not had higher stock prices than they do today, in the past 5 years, and American (AA) are getting close to being back to their highs of within the past 5 years. Could it possibly be that a company doing this kind of thing might perhaps have some switched on marketeers who want to take some initiative by catering to more people, and getting more revenue from a wider customer base? Most businesses should be focused on how to boost revenues, at least that's my base assumption. I don't think it's fair to assume a company launching an expanded service offering (even if a less expensive one) is automatically in an urgent or dire need to grab cash. All said though, I'm sure Jetsmarter are interested in as much revenue as they can get!

DLH441

Shuttles flights were already overcrowded, now we're gonna have to book our shuttle 1 month in advance !!

Flying777

Beside the new Member Levels I also noted shuttle prices have increased dramatically:

e.g. oneway prices
London - Dubai 8038,- USD
London - NY 6888,- USD
NY - LA 6313,- USD

Looking for Dubai you can fly one time return by Jetsmarter or three to four times return in First Class by commercial ... wondering if they will find
people paying over 8000,- USD for a shared Bizjet.

Are those prices also for people who have already signed up in the past or only for the new "Simple" Level?

SFO777

LOL. Only a fool would pay US$8,000 and choose JS shuttle over Emirates First Class.

Sykes

It appears that JetSmarter's President and Vice Chairman (and former CFO) was arrested last week on suspicion of embezzlement possibly related to his management of a fund that predates his work at JetSmarter:

https://corporatejetinvestor.com/art...l-reasons-045/

JetSmarter announced his resignation "for personal reasons" today.

SFO777

Yikes. Drip, drip, drip...

sfo2bos

Wait are those prices for full members, while using tokens? Or would that be the price without the use of tokens?

millions

What is the difference between this and smart, then? I know they are now charging new smart members fees on longer flights, too. $765 each way for LA to NYC, for example.

Qlcing

Can someone explain the "shuttle tokens" to me? As in, how many "free" shuttles can I take per year?

Sykes

Each shuttle has a per-seat cost. If you have tokens available, you have the option to use them to discount the first seat (your seat) on any shuttle. To get the discount, you use a single token when reserving most flights under 3 hours, and two for most flights over 3 hours (which means that SMART members with two tokens can book short-haul shuttles roundtrip, but can only one-way for long-haul shuttles).

For older members, these tokens discount 100% of the shuttle cost for most shuttles (excluding some "holiday shuttles" as well as NYC<->London and London<->Dubai), but for some newer members they discount all the cost on short flights, but the member pays something like $800 for the shuttles over 3 hours.

The tokens return to your account at the scheduled departure time for the flight you reserve, at which point you can make your next reservation. As such, you can take as many free (or reduced cost) shuttle flights as you want but you can only reserve a limited number at any given time (one or two for SMART members). The more popular shuttles sell out weeks in advance, so in many cases you're effectively limited by those reservations.

sfo2bos

That makes sense. Must be hard trying to do anything reasonably quick turn for long haul. Considering you'd have to pay a LOT for a single seat on a small plane, on a tranatl or transcon I'd just buy a business class lie flat for one leg.

Which makes it, at the lower tiers, a strange system for anything more than short hop. You spend the annual knowing anything over a couple hours you are effectively taking commercial one way. I'm not saying you should get unlimited free trips on a transcon G V for $15k/year, but being able to reserve the return for something between $0 and $6,000 would make the product a lot more valuable to someone like me.

The bigger hop must be to the top tier. What does that cost, I remember something like $45k? Does this membership get you four shuttles tokens or something? I'd assume they are pushing this over the $15k tier hense no middle ground.

But yeah $8k one way on a crowded biz jet, much better to fly first!

Sykes

They're increasing Sophisticated to $50k/year on March 1. (It's $5k initiation + $45k/year now.) It has 4 tokens, plus a few other ancillary benefits--no cancellation fees if you cancel at least 24 hours out; you can book empty legs for friends even if you're not on the plane; extra seats on shuttles are a tad bit cheaper--but oddly enough, they're not widely advertising that the tier is available. They're trying to create an aura of exclusivity around Sophisticated. I've been getting the hard sell on Sophisticated membership from my sales rep, and it being an exclusive invite-only tier is a key part of the pitch.