Tomislav Lang, founder and managing director at Flyv.
ISTANBUL—On-demand regional mobility provider Flyv plans to launch operations in 2025, with the last preparations currently taking place for tickets to go on sale next year, founder and managing director Tomislav Lang said at the Routes World event here in Istanbul.
The company is targeting a fleet of at least 135 aircraft by 2030, Lang said. Flyv also announced Oct. 16 that it had signed a letter of intent with U.S. electric aircraft startup Eviation to provide up to 25 nine-seater aircraft. Those aircraft are set to enter service from 2030, Lang said, adding, “This partnership is growing."
App-based Flyv plans to launch operations in 2025, with the first tickets going on sale in 2024. It is currently finalizing the software to make that happen.
Flyv was born from a desire to bring back regional aviation to airports that are not connected and need to be better connected in future, Lang told the Routes World conference in Istanbul October 17.
“With our algorithms, our [artificial intelligence], we can make on-demand travel happen, where our customers will basically decide on where and how to fly,” Lang said.
The idea is to make use of regional airports and routes where customer demand exists, but is too low to support daily scheduled connections, Lang said, noting that worldwide there are more than 22,000 unconnected regional airports. Flyv will start operations using the nine-seat Tecnam P2012 Traveller.
“We have a huge overload on the main core routes and mobility as we know it today. Flyv is not here to not here to compete with big airlines on big trunk routes. What we don’t have is a good connection to decentral regional markets,” Lang said.
Customers enter their preferred flight times into the system and get cheaper tickets the more flexibility they allow for. Passengers are also given a timeframe for the flight at point of booking. Flyv then uses an algorithm to optimize its daily schedule based on demand, providing exact itinerary details three days before the flight.
Three days before departure the schedule is locked in, and while customers can still book at that point, the option for flexibility is no longer available. Flights will be in the 40-60-min. range on average, and Flyv does not expect its operational costs to exceed €900 ($950) per flight hour. “With nine-seater aircraft we need to be super-efficient,” Lang said. “We have the right unit economics on the aircraft.”
"The goal is to achieve an average load factor of 30%-40% in the first two years, because with that, we can prove positive unit economics, which would be interesting to our investors," Lang said.
Although the first aircraft will be 9-seater, there is nothing to stop Flyv scaling up to 19 or 31 seats, although going beyond 31-seat aircraft would be "tricky," Lang said.
“We’re not looking to compete with the scheduled airlines. We’re much more looking to partner with them,” Lang said, noting that some are already interested in the Flyv product. “Mainly it’s the car and the train we want to beat.”
The company plans to start operations in Europe but believes the market could be unlocked worldwide in the future, Lang added.
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