Getting to the Hamptons can be a real drag, especially over big holiday weekends like Memorial Day.
Blade, an aviation startup cofounded by former Sony and Warner Music Group exec Rob Wiesenthal and GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci, aims to make it a little easier on you.
Blade uses an app to crowdsource flights on helicopters and seaplanes that you can book seats on in an instant. Rather than have you spend hours on a slow train or in a cramped car, Blade's flights promise to get you out to the Hamptons in under 40 minutes.
Though Blade started out with flights to the Hamptons, which remains its most popular destination, the startup has expanded to offer flights in many weekend getaway spots, including Nantucket, the Jersey Shore, and around different parts of Los Angeles. You can even snag a seat on a helicopter going to one of the New York area airports, a five-minute ride the company calls Blade Bounce.
Tickets range from $494 to $695 for a trip from Manhattan to the Hamptons, Blade's most popular destination. For a few hundred dollars more, you can do a custom charter flight to a destination of your choice, and you can even choose to fly on a faster aircraft if you'd like. A one-way ticket on Blade One, the company's private jet service from New York to Miami, costs about $2,200.
Socialites, celebrities, and elite businesspeople are catching on — Laura Prepon, Jon Hamm, and Olivia Palermo are just a few of the big names that have been spotted in one of Blade's luxury lounges in Manhattan. The company's investors include Kenneth Lerer, Discovery Communications' David Zaslav, Google's Eric Schmidt, IAC's Barry Diller, and iHeart Media's Bob Pittman.
Blade treated us to a trip to the Hamptons on a late summer evening in 2015. Here's how lots of wealthy New Yorkers will be getting out to the Hamptons this summer.
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Our journey began in Blade's 34th Street lounge, where we found a comfortable setup of couches and stools along a sleek bar. "You can't beat the on-demand aspect," Jarrett, a Blade customer who works in Manhattan real estate, told me.
Customer experience (or C/X in Blade lingo) representatives Jessica Rooney and Erin Mulcahy were there to help. They're wearing uniforms that were custom designed by Jimmy Choo founder Tamara Mellon just for Blade.
The C/X team has worn several different retro-inspired uniforms. "My inspiration for Blade harkens back to the days when I was a young child and my parents would dress me up to get on a plane," Wiesenthal, Blade's cofounder and CEO, said to Business Insider in 2016.
He added: "It was the golden age of aviation — the '60s to early '70's, the Jack Kennedy, Frank Sinatra era — when getting on a jet plane was a big deal and an adventure. Not everybody did it. And there was always a story attached to it."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider