French ‘Uber of aircraft,’ Wingly secures €3M funding

French take off-flight sharing startup Wingly has secured a €3 million funding led by Innovacom Fund. Besides this funding round, the aviation startup has announced its expansion plans as well. The startup is planning to launch Wingly Pro, which will make it the first online platform to let smaller, commercial aviation operators advertise their flights and connect directly with potential passengers.

Eyes to accelerate growth

With the investment, the flight sharing platform Wingly will launch the Wingly Pro, a new commercial aviation service. Also, it will accelerate the growth of its cost-sharing flights in its major markets including the UK, Germany and France. In addition, operators can post flights with spare seats including empty flights.

Notably, the listing on the Wingly platform will be limited only to businesses that have valid certifications from the Civil Aviation Authority for commercial air transport across Europe. Similar to the other online booking portals, this platform has obtained a licence as a pan European travel agency.

Wingly Pro will address demands in aviation sector

Wingly Pro will assist the combat of one of the private aviation sector’s most persistent challenges. These challenges include illegal charter flights. Wingly will register, validate and monitor all parties using the commercial air transport service. Eventually, it will give them the ability to make sure the barriers of both private and commercial operations are not crossed.

During the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, when there are heavy losses in the aviation industry across the world, the launch of Wingly Pro is a move taken by the French flight-sharing platform’s ambition of becoming a catalyst in the innovation of the industry.

Notably, the global pandemic has affected the mobility and travel industries. The companies in the aviation sector need to adopt a fundamental change with suitable digital tools. And, Wingly eyes to contribute to the development of sustainable aviation with just 40% occupancy in charter flights. It focuses on filling empty seats, improving the aircraft occupancy rate and reducing the carbon footprint per passenger. This will reduce the cost for all parties.

Founded by Emeric de Waziers, Bertrand Joab-Cornu, and Lars Klein in 2015, Wingly is also developing a variety of new features to coincide with the pending launch of Wingly Pro. These include ‘flight request’, which allows users to directly post the type of flights they are looking for on the website depending on the criteria of the specific request and can be met by commercial operators or a cost-shared flight with private pilots.

“The launch of Wingly Pro this summer will extend our vision and make Wingly the largest collaborative community for private aviation,” said Wingly co-founder and CEO Emeric de Waziers.

“This foray into commercial aviation will help us respond to the existing demand from our community as well as complementing the leisure-oriented cost-shared flights currently being offered by the 20,000 private pilots who have already registered with our platform,” said Emeric de Waziers, co-founder and CEO of Wingly.

“Our platform will be able to provide much-needed clarity and transparency to the public,” said Emeric de Waziers. ”This will enable them to select trusted operators and pilots, whose documents have been thoroughly checked and verified by Wingly and who are operating within the rules.”

“With the way the current global pandemic has affected the mobility and travel sector, aviation will require a fundamental change in approach as well as suitable digital tools,” said Jerome Faul, President of the Innovacom fund.

Main image picture credits: Wingly