A Netflix For Private Flights: Surf Air Founders Take Off With Rival Members-Only Airline

Feb. 11, 2015
Beacon will serve a very particular clientele: frequent fliers for whom a price tag of $2,000 per month for unlimited flights is a bargain.

If Netflix lets you watch unlimited movies with a monthly subscription, why not follow the same model for air travel? Such was the genesis of Surf Air, a subscription-based airline that launched in 2013 and ferries frequent fliers along the busy San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor. Now, the cofounders of Surf Air, who left the startup last year, have made their way east to launch Beacon, a new plane service traversing the New York to Boston route.

Like Surf Air, Beacon will serve a very particular clientele: frequent fliers for whom a price tag of $2,000 per month for unlimited flights is a bargain. Think the upper echelons of the business world, people who take to the air many times a month—and often with little notice. There’s plenty of room for major airline mishaps in such arrangements.

More details here.