Press Release

Issued by Flapper.

June 19, 2018

Flapper, Brazil's first private aviation marketplace, announced recently its R$3 million (U$1 million) Seed investment, led by the U$60 million aerospace fund Aerotec of Confrapar and Travel Capitalist Ventures, a VC fund with offices in California, Dubai, Durban and Doha. The investment complements a previous round raised by the accelerator ACE and the co-founders, and constitutes one of two rounds of funding to be announced in 2018.

According to Paul Malicki, Flapper's CEO, the capital will be directed towards expansion of the pay-per-seat market in Brazil. “Our plan includes building a network of shared routes between airports unavailable to commercial aviation, with a slant towards premium destinations. This requires an integration with the entire travel market, from corporate travel agencies, to meta-search engines, to our own distribution systems.,” says Paul. “Consequently, once we reach a critical mass, we'll launch a membership plan in the Southeast of Brazil, enabling an all-you-can-fly option for our clients,” he continues.

According to Rodrigo Esteves, managing partner at Confrapar, “Flapper constitutes an important addition to our fund's portfolio, since it creates an entirely new market of seat sharing in a private aviation sector; something that already exists abroad and represents a huge opportunity for the local air taxi sector.” 

The company was launched in 2016 with a very ambitious mission to democratize private aviation with technology and ta sharing economy. The idea came into being as a response to the lack of first class services in the commercial aviation sector. Being frequent flyers themselves, the co-founders saw an unexplored market niche within executive aviation. At that time, Malicki acted as the CMO and partner of Easy Taxi. The others, Arthur Virzin, Iago Senefonte and William Oliveira, were coding at Qiwi, a Russian fintech company. Arthur, the current CTO, led the local technology team from 2011 until its IPO in 2015.

Today, Brazil has 2,457 airports, but only 121 of them are connected through commercial aviation. The country is considered the second largest private aviation market in the world, the first place being occupied by the United States, but air taxi companies commercialize only 22% of all flights. Lack of technology, seat sharing, and an efficient distribution strategy, turn the air taxi sector sub-utilized, with a potential to double its size in the coming three years. Flapper's own research demonstrates that Brazil has more than 400.000 potential clients for charters and 2.7 million future pay-per-seat buyers.

As of today, Flapper offers routes between the capital cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and Brazil's premium leisure destinations, such as Búzios and Angra dos Reis. The company intends to launch flights to Belo Horizonte, Brazil's third largest city, at the end of 2018. The average price is an equivalent of U$200 between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and U$100-200 for shorter flights to the seaside.

Other than shared flights, the app allows for on-demand jet-and helicopter rentals. The existing air taxi sector functions in a traditional, quotation-based system, and there is no real-time price information. The platform aggregates more than 100 homologated aircraft in Brazil. All aircraft offered by Flapper operate under Part 135 frameworks, which guarantees higher security and homologation of the planes. The company flies in the following aircraft models: King Air 200/250, Pilatus PC-12, Caravan Grand and Sikorsky S76.