Anyone who has ever walked into the cockpit of an airplane and seen the advanced instrumentation knows that pilots use a great deal of technology when airborne. What might come as a surprise, however, is once a private pilot is on the ground very little technology is used. Inefficient ground handling and storage methods currently require paper and phone calls with few online tools available to aid in coordination between pilots and the ground services they may need upon arriving at their destination. EmptyHangar is seeking to change this dichotomy, starting with an online reservation system for airplane hangars.
Currently, most hangar space at fixed based operators (FBOs) works on a first-come, first-serve basis. Essentially, once a pilot lands at an airport he must go to the hangar and inquire if space is available for the night. If there is no room at the inn, the plane must be left outside exposed to the elements which can cause serious and costly damage. Adding to the inefficiencies of the system, there may be empty privately-owned hangars at the same airport whose owners have flown elsewhere but who have no way to coordinate with pilots on the ground looking for hangar space (the FAA does offer a rudimentary online system, but it is seldom used). Witnessing these inefficiencies from the vantage point of his aircraft detailing service in Colorado Springs gave Morgan Cumley the idea to create just such a coordination system. Thus was born the idea for EmptyHangar, a Colorado Springs based startup co-founded by Cumley and David Mason.
EmptyHangar operates in essentially the same way as any online hotel reservation system. First, a hangar owner (or Nightly Service Provider – NSP – in company terminology), be it an individual with a single T-hangar or an FBO with 65,000 square feet of space, registers at EmptyHangar, specifies the type of hangar, location, and dates available, and sets a price. EmptyHangar provides recommended prices based on hangar size, but according to Mason the value of a hangar is highly dependent on “local weather conditions and the amount of hangar space at the airport.” Once that hangar is logged into inventory, it will appear when a pilot looking to store his plane enters search criteria matching the hangar’s specifications. When a pilot reserves the hangar, he is provided any necessary instructions from the NSP (e.g. lockbox code to access the hangar) and pays the agreed upon price which goes to the NSP less the 10% fee charged by EmptyHangar for its coordination services.
The company’s available hangars are currently concentrated in California, Colorado and Florida, but the company seeks to expand national coverage. Growth has accelerated recently with the company doubling both available hangar space and the number of pilots registered in the month of December. EmptyHangar must balance available hangar space with a network of pilots seeking space carefully to ensure satisfied customers. As such, the company is both aggressively pursuing hangar owners to sign up and engaging in a variety of marketing activities to expand awareness among pilots. Mason notes that Twitter has been one of the more effective marketing tools for the company. The company (EmptyHangar on Twitter) posts about its new hangar offerings and other activities and seeks pilots to follow, who in turn may re-broadcast the company’s messages to their network of followers. According to Mason, “tech savvy pilots are pretty connected with other tech-savvy pilots so the word spreads pretty fast.” Another key tool has been posting on pilot-centric online forums in response to general questions about hangars with a link to the company’s website included.
The company is also working to advance the technology and interface behind the EmptyHangar site. Among planned updates is the option to set and save different prices for a particular hangar by date to better allow hangar owners to adjust to market conditions. For example, hangar owners in Tampa might want to set prices higher for Super Bowl weekend but keep prices at lower levels for future dates. Cumley and Mason are also experimenting with adding new services beyond hangar reservations that they could offer their growing customer base of networked pilots, including aiding in coordination among those involved in pool ownership of planes.
The day may not be far off when pilots begin to rely on technology for ground operations the same way they do in the air. Each day, the pilot community moves in this direction as highly-connected newer pilots with existing Twitter and FaceBook accounts join the ranks. With about 600,000 registered pilots in the country, significant market potential exists for EmptyHangar – a potential the company believes it is well prepared to capitalize on.
