The first domestic “crowdfund charter flight”, a collaboration between JD.com and Air China, has been launched. Air China has deployed aircraft with inflight internet access to operate the flights from Beijing to two destinations in the Sichuan and Chongqing regions on January 15-16.
Project manager Hongcai Gao said Chongqing and Chengdu were selected as destinations having taken into account Baidu‘s analytics and demand for Air China’s flights around Spring Festival in the past.
The flight has four categories of pricing – in addition to regular crowdfunding seats, there are also incentives such as lucky draws for a ticket to be used within six months on any Air China domestic flights for RMB1 and lucky draws for first-class seats for RMB9, according to JD’s crowdfunding operation.
Air China’s commercial partnerships project manager Miao Wang said the airlines has been working on enhancing the integration of online connectivity and flight operations. “We have 15 aircraft equipped with free inflight Wi-Fi service and this will increase to 40 to 50 planes by the end of the year,” he said.
JD.com and Air China have jointly created an inflight e-shopping platform at the end of 2014. With online connectivity, passengers of the crowdfund charter flight can use the e-shopping channel to do their Spring Festival shopping and have their purchases handled in real time in JD.com’s network and delivered to their homes.(Translation by David)
