Northern Pacific Airways/Flycoin President & Co-Founder, Tom Hsieh at the CAPA Americas Aviation & LCCs 2022 Summit
Tom Hsieh, President & Co-Founder of the Northern Pacific Airways/Flycoin, spoke to CAPA TV on the sidelines of the CAPA Americas Aviation & LCCs Summit about how it plans to disrupt the industry.
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Transcript
Tom Hsieh:Oh, I love being here at CAPA Summit because, you know, this summit for low-cost carriers— low-cost carriers are the true innovators of the aviation space, right? They're the true disruptors of the space. So it's wonderful to be in a room full of disruptors, right? And what we're doing is we're bringing disruption. To the industry. But we think there's an opportunity. I think there's a tremendous opportunity for everyone here at this summit, all these low-cost carriers that could be banded together. You know what, what kind of disruption we could bring together to the industry, I think could be really powerful. This is an incredible time for us to start our airline, right? Because the timing of what's available to us right now, the cost of the aircraft, the availability of gate slots, The even some even pilots availability of 757 pilots who took early retirement, you know, two years ago, and the the timing for us right now is essential to to get into the market to to to take what would have been a great plan, a great business plan pre-pandemic, but the pandemic just has accelerated and accentuated all the advantages that that we bring to the market. We Have purchased four 757s now, and there it's a perfect aircraft because of stage length. Right? So what we're what we're utilizing is a narrow body for long haul with a hub in Anchorage that that that gives us a structural advantage of lower fuel costs versus a wide body across you know the same you know endpoints where. You know, as the fuel prices are increasing right now, that actually accentuates our our cost advantage. So so the the 757 is is great in terms of you know the its its capacity, the number of seats, you know, and allow and its stage length allows us to service you know some some thinner legs, right? It allows us to service secondary cities that otherwise would never see direct flights. And so to do a one-hop itinerary with 25% less cost, we think it would be great for the market. We've been very public about our destinations. So on the Asia side, we're looking to fly into Tokyo and Nagoya and Osaka and Seoul in South Korea. On the US 48 side, we're looking to fly into New York, Orlando, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Cryptocurrency is disrupting everyone. It's disrupting the whole world right now, and what a better place to implement it than in airline loyalty points. It's actually, we believe, the perfect use case. It's— what it addresses for, you know, traditional airline miles, you know, the disadvantages are, you know, they expire. They depreciate over time. It's hard to transfer. You can't exchange it for other currencies or for fiat. And so we get to address all that with cryptocurrency. Beyond that, you know, the legacy traditional airline miles really is built for the mainline carriers. And so at a conference like this for low-cost carriers, you know, oftentimes the airline loyalty alliances are a walled garden, right, to keep low-cost carriers out, or it's become kind of more of something that— a stranglehold on regional providers, you know, that— We think there's an opportunity if we— all the low-cost carriers and regional providers were to come together to create a whole new revolution in loyalty points, one, you know, built on cryptocurrency. And we think there's a way for us to really revolutionize because low-cost carriers are disruptors. We can move fast, we can implement the technology, and we can be far ahead of slower mainline carriers that cannot adopt as quickly. So we, we're here to really invite all airlines to participate in the new global alliance of cryptocurrency loyalty rewards.
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