News   May 13, 2005   Flight Maker Honored as the Best Travel Site Mountain View, Calif., (May 13, 2005) -- The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences has bestowed the Webby Award in Travel this year to Flight Maker Jet Charter Club (www.flightmaker.com.) Designed and developed by Onlinefocus of Mountain View, Calif., the site was selected over runners-up AOL CityGuide, Orbitz, GoCityKids, and LonelyPlanet. Hailed as "the online Oscars" by The New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international honor for web sites and the people behind them. Tiffany Shlain, founder of The Webby Awards said "This is a tremendous honor, an unparalleled accolade recognizing the very best of the Internet." Onlinefocus designed and engineered the integrated system of public websites, applications, intranets and extranets, enabling Flight Maker to establish a completely new kind of business online. Flight Maker is the brainchild of David Jaynes, the company’s president and founder, a former NFL player and All American quarterback from the University of Kansas. "My wife and I had the idea one weekend when some people flying a private jet offered to drop us off at Bandon Dunes golf course on their way to Portland. We were flying commercial and it was going to take us 7 hours to get there - instead it took less than two hours and we didn’t have to wait in any lines – that’s when Flight Maker was born". The Flight Maker Jet Charter Club significantly reduces the cost of private jet travel by matching small groups of travelers who have common itineraries so they can share a plane. Then the empty return flight "legs" are sold to other members, often to costs equal to first class airline fare.. Most of the flights available to Flight Maker members are on high traffic routes between major markets and popular destinations, such as Southern California, Texas or Chicago to Colorado, and New York to South Florida. "This exciting and challenging project required a database-driven system that manages four websites: The public website, a private member website, and the charter jet operators and flight administration websites," said Tapo Munshi, who managed the project for Onlinefocus. The flight matching process is orchestrated through a system of automated data communications between the four sites. Flight Maker members post their travel plans or join the posted plans of others who are going to the same destination. When plans are posted, the Flight Maker software automatically sends an email to other Flight Maker members who have selected that particular destination as one of their "favorites." Automated emails keep travelers, charter operators and Flight Maker administrators apprised in real time regarding who wants to travel, where they want to go, and who is flying planes to those destinations. "The technology developed for Flight Maker has other potential applications for high end services and products where customers would benefit from cost sharing capabilities such as chartering luxury yachts," said Munshi. "The beauty of the Flight Maker web site and the automation that is built into it is that we don’t need a lot of people," said Jaynes. "We can quadruple the size of our membership and still stay lean as a business, because the web site does so much of the work and keeps everything moving along." "Onlinefocus did what I was looking for when choosing a company – they got into the business and started designing from the perspective as if we were running the business together – they were coming up with functionality and features that I hadn’t thought about. This has made a big difference," Jaynes commented. About Flight Maker Founded in 2002, Flight Maker (www.flightmaker.com) is privately held company which provides attractive private jet travel services to a qualified membership. Flight Maker is based in Los Angeles California. About Onlinefocus Founded in 1995, Onlinefocus (www.onlinefocus.com) is, a Silicon Valley based, web strategy, design, development, and creative agency, with offices in Mountain View, Memphis, Boca Raton, Cincinnati, and Portland. About The Webby Awards Called the "Oscars of the Internet" by The New York Times, the Webby is the leading international award honoring excellence in Web design, creativity, usability and functionality. Established in 1996, the 9th Annual Webby Awards received over 4,000 entries from all 50 states and over 40 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards is presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. For more information, visit www.webbyawards.com.             © 1996-2006 Onlinefocus, Inc. | Contact Us | A UCI Web Group Company. All rights reserved.