Flying Visit

There are few better ways to arrive at Goodwood than by air. Wingly, a new platform that connects pilots of light aircraft with passengers looking for flights, is making flying a more convenient and low-cost option than ever before. Think of it as carpooling for planes. 

Wingly began as a way for private (amateur) pilots to make their expensive hobby more affordable. “Once you get your pilot’s licence, you need to fly a certain number of hours each year to keep it,” explains Emeric de Waziers, one of the company’s founders. “As a pilot, you always try to share the cost of flying with friends and family, but it’s hard to keep this going. That’s where the initial idea came from – to help pilots fly for less, and to allow them to share their passion with others. In doing so, we hope to dispel the cliché that private aviation is reserved for an elite.”

The Wingly platform launched in France in July 2015 before branching out into Germany and the UK. Pilots can offer three types of flight: the overnight excursion (London to Le Touquet on the north coast of France was 2017’s most popular trip), the A-B (either a one-way flight or a return), and local sightseeing flights. The new flight request function, meanwhile, allows passengers to ask for specific flights and pilots to respond accordingly. 

“We have a really simple rule, which states that open regulation pilots are not allowed to make money,” explains de Waziers. “They can’t make a profit from these flights, so for them it’s really a case of sharing the direct costs: fuel, parking, the landing field and, in certain instances, the price of renting the plane.” This means you can fly from London to Liverpool for just £63 each way, or from Goodwood to Alderney in the Channel Islands for £94 each way.

Sadly, flights are limited to 700km, but for good reason. “These are small planes and the inside can be more like a car than an Airbus, which means there are no toilets on board,” says de Waziers. “Secondly, the weather can be a constraint: if conditions are really bad, the flight can be cancelled, and the longer a flight’s duration, the more chance there is of encountering bad weather.”

In 2017, in the UK alone, Wingly went from having 3,000 to 50,000 online members. There are currently around 20,000 flights being offered – some every weekend, others more flexible. Private aviation, it seems, is at last open to everyone.