Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company’s Future—and What to Do About It

by Tien Tzuo

“From a business perspective, we all know that airlines have struggled for years,” says Mac Kern, former vice president of commercial planning at Surf Air. “It’s a very capital intensive business, not to mention commodity-based. Prices get driven downward. It’s very competitive. The subscription model gives us predictive revenue—that’s something that no commercial carriers have. They don’t know if a flight is going to be profitable until the door on the airplane closes (and they still have to fly at that point!). Because of subscriptions, we know exactly how much revenue we’re going to generate at the beginning of every month. So we can scale our operation effectively, because we know exactly how much flying we’re able to execute. That kind of insight is basically magic in the aviation industry. No one has been able to do that before.”