Flywheel Taxi App Adds Advance Booking For Airport Trips

July 25, 2014
Taxi companies scored a new weapon in their battle against the ride companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, which have siphoned their business

July 24--Taxi companies scored a new weapon in their battle against the ride companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, which have siphoned their business.

Starting Wednesday, taxi passengers can schedule rides in advance to airports in San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland using Flywheel, the smartphone app adopted by most San Francisco cabs as a way to compete against the tech-enabled newcomers.

While Uber and other ride services drop off passengers at the airport -- although SFO officials aren't thrilled with their presence -- those startups exclusively operate "on demand." (One company that uses regular people driving their own cars, called Wingz, in fact has built its business model around scheduled trips to and from the airport, but it is a much smaller enterprise.)

"This was the top request on customer focus groups," said Steve Humphreys, CEO of Redwood City's Flywheel. About 80 percent of San Francisco cabs now use his app in addition to traditional dispatch and street hails, he said. Flywheel offers the same features as the apps for ride services, including quick ride requests, real-time maps of a cab's location and credit card processing,

Flywheel passengers pay the regular metered rate plus a $1 fee that goes to Flywheel, which also takes 10 percent of the fare. Airport rides do not cost extra.

"Pre-booking is tricky; if someone has to be at the airport at 5 a.m., it has to be 100 percent guaranteed," Humphreys said. "We have systems in place to make sure you get picked up no matter what."

The reservations are only for airport drop-offs. For pickups -- which Uber and Lyft are barred from providing -- passengers still must queue up at the airport.

For now, reservations are only for passengers in San Francisco, but the service will expand to other parts of the Bay Area in the coming months. Seattle and Los Angeles will get pre-booking of airport rides this summer.

"Flywheel in my mind is the savior for the taxi industry," said Hansu Kim, owner of San Francisco's DeSoto Cab Co. Rides booked via Flywheel account for about 20 percent "and growing" of the business for his 200-cab fleet. "With the right marketing push to let people know about our technology, the taxi industry can win back market share."

Still, he and others say the number of taxi drivers and passengers has fallen as they're lured to the ride services.

The San Francisco MTA is lending a hand with that marketing push, displaying ads for Flywheel whenever it has extra space inside or outside Muni buses or at bus stops. The "Hail a Real Taxi Driver with Flywheel" ads are on about 50 buses at any one time, Humphreys said.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @CSaid

Copyright 2014 - San Francisco Chronicle