Back in the day, a private driver was something that few could afford.

Nowadays, there’s an app for that. If you want to be driven somewhere, you simply hail an Uber, and if you want to be fancy about it, you hail an Uber Black.

Sorted.

One thing that has stayed the domain of the elite is private air travel – just ask Kim and Kanye – but if Rudd Davis gets his way, that’s all set to change.

Forbes reports that the former USA Today and Groupon executive wants to make private flying as affordable as driving, thereby making it the go-to option for any 80-to-800-kilometre trip, calling BlackBird an “Uber-For-Planes” startup:

“If they think luxury air travel, they shouldn’t think about us. There are no couches on our planes,” Davis told Forbes.

Instead, Davis has spent the last three years building BlackBird, a startup that connects passengers with private planes and pilots. Passengers can join an existing flight plan and purchase open seats on the flight. Or customers can charter a plane to travel from, say, the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe, and then pick a pilot from BlackBird’s preapproved list of commercially trained pilots.

“BlackBird has become an alternative to driving,” Davis said.

So far BlackBird has raised $10 million from Silicon Valley venture firm NEA. Jonathan Golden, a partner at NEA and a former Airbnb director, will join the board.

“The initial reaction may be kind of a question mark, but when you really dig in, it’s more of a perception vs. reality,” Golden told Forbes. “It’s really been demonstrated by the appetite and demand for the product.”

The key to BlackBird’s success will be amassing enough demand to drive down prices.

Then there’s the challenge of getting enough airplanes and pilots onto BlackBird’s network. Unlike Lyft, Uber or Airbnb, which could rely on the fact that a lot of people having cars or houses, most people don’t own airplanes.

BlackBird will be using the $10 million in funding to knock down prices and get the project off the ground.

If they do manage to get it right, it could be fun times ahead.

You can click around their site if you want to see more on how the hailing process works.

[source:forbes]