PrivateJet.com launches AI charter broker
PrivateJet.com launches AI charter broker named Wilbur.
His name is Wilbur and he knows it. That’s because Wilbur is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed to take private jet charter booking to the next level.
Pioneered by charter platform PrivateJet.com, Wilbur is “transforming” the booking process by providing real-time estimates and aircraft options for business aviation clients.
“As far as we know it really is the first AI broker system in the industry,” Mike Loff, vice president, charter sales, PrivateJet.com tells us.
“You can chat to Wilbur right now and he’ll tell you what’s the closest airport, what pricing you want, what type of aircraft he’d recommend.”
Close to reality
The team at PrivateJet.com have collected data based on millions of quotes, all from the last two to three years, to make private jet chartering “faster, smarter and more accessible” than ever. Removing the need for third-party data provides customers with the “most realistic, up-to-date and competitive pricing in the industry”.
“We’ve basically created a robot that reads that historical data and provides quotes as close as we can get to reality,” adds Loff.
Wilbur, named after aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright, is live on the PrivateJet.com website and is garnering “hundreds” of searches per day, he says.
“It’s been working fantastically, and we’ve just launched,” adds Loff. “We’ve seen nothing but success so far. We’ve been learning as we go as well.”
He adds: “The difference between Wilbur and a regular search tool is you can ask Wilbur to compare two aircraft – you can say, ‘Hey, what’s the difference between a Hawker 400XP and a Challenger 300?’”
The next step is increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the quoting tool. The team are in the process of uploading a list of about 10,000 individual aircraft, detailing all of their specifics such as when the interior was refurbished.
“So you can compare not just a Hawker 800 to a Challenger but two different Hawker 800s,” says Loff.
Convenience
As of now, Wilbur is a tool which provides an estimate before handing over the quote to a live human assistant. If the request is about an asap trip within about 12 hours, the company recommends going straight to the charter team because “everybody needs to start going real quick”.
“With PrivateJet.com it’s all about convenience. Wilbur helps with our 24/7 coverage no matter whether you’re in Indonesia or Florida looking for a plane, there will always be someone there ready to assist,” says Loff.
He concedes that AI tools are prone to mistakes and to that end PrivateJet.com has a disclaimer on its website. But as the technology develops, Wilbur’s capabilities are only going to increase, says Loff.
“On specific routes, for people not sensitive about specific aircraft, I can see this getting to a point where people might be booking an aircraft through AI,” he adds.
