How the trend of remote work can benefit the charter industry

Once upon a time, a virus spread across the nation that caused major disruption to the travel industry. As a result, a small group of highly experienced travel experts found themselves with too much brainpower and not enough work to do. They got together at a local lake in a socially distanced manner to catch up on the progress of their honey do list.  Since they had worked together for many years and knew each other’s skills well, their conversation quickly came back to the travel industry. One member brought up what was happening in the air charter industry due to COVID-19. After many more discussions and a lot of research, Charter and Go was born.

Starting a business during COVID-19 brought a lot of benefits to our organization. The company was founded as a work from home organization which means that our overhead costs are substantially lower than that for software companies that rent office space for their employees.  We were able to focus on our work with minimal distractions and no commute time. We also found great talent in different states and did not have to move them to our location.

Online video meetings were scheduled to keep the team up to date on status and work on system design. We learned quickly that we had to ensure that we communicated clearly to keep everyone in the loop and on track. Unfortunately, water cooler chats were forfeited due to the work from home approach, but we did find time for some chatter in the meetings to keep everyone motivated.  

Many companies had difficulties with the work from home model during COVID. As a technology company, we did not have these issues as everyone had sufficient internet access and hardware to do their jobs. We did lose the excitement and interactions with in-person whiteboard design sessions where we would through ideas and debate them to yield a great design. Our work around was to use the drawing and presentation tools that were part of our productivity toolset. We missed the socializing and personal interactions that we had before the epidemic. Fortunately, they will be able to start up this summer!

We learned a lot about operating a successful work from home company during the pandemic. Communications in terms of emails and online meetings with the group or a few team members were key to our success. We believe it has many benefits for other air charter technology companies as the industry grows post-COVID.  Increased workplace flexibility will allow you to attract and retain the best employees.

Ann Vinod – VP of Finance