FBO Subscription Service?

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Roffee Loosigian

Filing Flight Plan
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Jan 26, 2025
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Rloosigian
Hello to all pilots and aviation enthusiasts, I am entertaining an idea of a subscription service to independent FBO's. This service would give you access to premium service such as being able to reserve crew cars, guaranteed parking tie downs or even possible indoor parking at some locations. I am looking for feedback on if this was a service what you would like to see out of this. This is mainly for more rural areas as larger airports already have excellent services through well known FBO's like signature. I would appreciate any feedback.
 
Not seeing how this "premium" service would provide anything that I can't already get with a phone call to the FBO. Respectfully, it seems like a solution in search of a problem. I'm all for supporting local airports with some reasonable additional revenue, but I think you need to make a better pitch as to why the stuff we can already get ourselves would benefit from a middle-man taking a cut and increasing the complexity of the transaction. Better crew cars? Online scheduling? Have you asked this question of rural airport managers and asked what their needs are?
 
AvNavCom said:
Not seeing how this "premium" service would provide anything that I can't already get with a phone call to the FBO. Respectfully, it seems like a solution in search of a problem. I'm all for supporting local airports with some reasonable additional revenue, but I think you need to make a better pitch as to why the stuff we can already get ourselves would benefit from a middle-man taking a cut and increasing the complexity of the transaction. Better crew cars? Online scheduling? Have you asked this question of rural airport managers and asked what their needs are?
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I have started to speak with rural airport managers to see what their needs are and they are receptive to the idea of a co op sort of program that allows the name of their FBO to be differentiated as a slight level above what you would expect. The problem I am trying to address for pilots alike is when you go to an airport listed as having fuel and they don't or expecting being able to have access to a car and being stranded. In an ideal world this subscription would give pilots who are members access to a car for longer periods of time that can only be used by other members thus increasing availability. Or possibly the idea of them filling up your plane while you leave for the same cost as self serve pumps. I appreciate any ideas
 
I'll be blunt - just no. The last thing GA needs is another middle-man layering in new fees and costs in exchange for providing virtually no value. I think most pilots just want a place to park, buy gas and pick up a rental car. Nobody needs some new app that's just trying to skim extra money out of the system.

AS to your specific "premium services" you want to provide:

1) The need for reserved parking is limited to a very small number of airports, and usually only during some very specific times. This provides no value at all to 90+% of the GA population.

2) Most FBOs, rightfully, don't reserve crew cars. So again, zero extra value to 90%+ of the GA population.

Find another "problem" to solve.
 
In order for this to be worthwhile you’d need to build a network of many many airports and sign up thousands of pilots who see value in this offering. I don’t see a big enough problem for airports or pilots that would actually allow you to do so. Those type of offerings really need to solve a huge pain point in order to scale sufficiently.

I’ve landed at 100s of airports, many of which were small, rural ones. Fuel being unavailable without a NOTAM happened once. I never landed at an airport expecting a crew car and not getting one. If I absolutely need service, I land at larger airports that have rental cars or are serviced by Uber and co. If I don’t need those services and end up at smaller airports, I go there for one of two reasons:

1. I’m on a long x-country flight and need a quick stop for fuel.

2. There is a restaurant or some attraction within walking distance that i want to visit.

The proposed subscription wouldn’t make my life any better in the two above scenarios.

Take my comment with a grain of salt - I’m a sample of one. At the same time, advising companies and helping startups raise $$$ is what i do for a living so i know a thing or two about building companies and the whole process.
 
Much of this information is already available through airnav, Foreflight, etc. If the smaller operators aren't keeping their information current in the existing services, they probably won't in a new one. Smaller airports are often mom and pop type places, in other words, not the type that would be likely to use this service.
 
I would not pay for such a subscription service. If it were bundled with something like ForeFlight and I was paying for it anyway, then I might use it.

I almost always call the FBO where I’m going to park, fuel, hangar, or get a courtesy car. I want a name and live person on the other end that can give me the actual update that day. That includes prices. Old school.
 
I would do a Prime type of service restricted to single engine/ small twin ops. For x amount you get the bare minimum service needed to fly there, no frills, no premium, just a place to park your plane and get to the street.
 
How much in compensation do you pay me if I arrive, and the previous user of the courtesy car has not returned? The cost of a taxi from t5he nearest town with one?

I have negotiated many strange alternatives that worked, but you are committing's to do that creative problem solving for me.

Either you or the airport are going into a treacherous place, and had better both have deep pockets.
 
Others have described the "non-problem" here and for the most part I agree: A phone call to the FBO is my preferred method of gathering info.

Why do I persist in this old-school approach? Because the one problem that needs to be solved appears to be unsolvable: Accuracy and timeliness of online information.

Example: There are plenty of places that post fuel prices and availability, but sometimes (most of the time?) those data are out of date. Maybe by a few days, maybe by weeks or months.

How will your data be kept reliable? The first time I make a decision based on the data in your service and that data is wrong, I will stop paying for the service.
 
Jim_R said:
Others have described the "non-problem" here and for the most part I agree: A phone call to the FBO is my preferred method of gathering info.
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It’s really a communication issue, and communicating through a third party will almost always be worse than communicating directly. (Remember the “telephone game”?)
 
There simply not enough people flying long cross countries and don’t want to do these things themselves to make this work.
 
I fly a lot of XCs but I wouldn't use the service.

I've found that many of these tiny FBOs are so behind the tech curve that it's amazing they can even figure out how to answer a phone (which is only about 50% of the time). And virtually none of them will respond to an email. Gotta go to one of the bigger corporate FBOs like Atlantic/Signature or a big FBO at class B/C/D airport to reliably get that 21st century amenity.

So odds of them having a working, accurate online reservation system they keep updated? I'd say less than 0% lol.

Plus I agree with the @midwestpa24 comment above about our collective frugal nature. Good luck getting even $1 out of a pilot's wallet (unless your name is Lycoming or Garmin, in which case you'll get tens of thousands without issue).
 
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