Vueling - Bizmatch By Vueling

Vueling - Bizmatch By Vueling

Pioneered by Silicon Valley-favourite Virgin America, more and more airlines are aligning themselves with creative and tech entrepreneurs as part of efforts to target a new class of ‘smart’ business travellers.

Examples include Delta’s ‘Innovation Class’ , a mentorship program that invites up-andcoming entrepreneurs to apply for a seat on a flight next to business leaders in a variety of fields en route to select events.

Turkish Airlines’ ‘Invest On Board’ program streams pitch videos from startups to the in-seat screens of passengers in Business Class, providing participating startups with a captive audience for their pitches.

The most recent iniative comes from Spanish LCC Vueling who teamed with Italian entrepreneurial association Assolombarda to organise the Bizmatch by Vueling inflight event in which 100 Spanish and Italian entrepreneurs teamed up to develop new business concepts onboard an A320 flying between Milan and Barcelona.

The inflight ‘micro event’ was the ending of the Social 2 Business conference held in Milan and in which all the participants had been involved.

During the flight, the participants – who were divided into 18 teams – had to choose which category they wanted to work on and work together to create a business concept.

The winning concepts were ‘Massive on Air Courses’ (making use of a journey to take inflight courses), Car Swap (leaving your car at the airport to let someone else use it while away), and ‘The Aviators’ (an app that helps travellers organise their trip by putting them in touch with other travellers making the same journey).