Direct charter-booking site Charterscanner is expanding into the U.S. market, having so far developed a database of approximately 120 operators in Europe and the Middle East with a combined fleet of more than 550 aircraft. The Dubai-based company has now opened a representative office in Atlanta and says it will launch fully in the U.S. once it has around 1,000 aircraft registered.

Charterscanner allows consumers to book their own private charters free of charge, excluding brokers from using the service. For now, most operators are registering aircraft at the site at no cost but once they achieve a certain threshold of bookings they will pay €550 ($491) to list each aircraft for a month.

According to Charterscanner CEO Vladislav Zenov, customers in Russia will be able to reduce flight costs by as much as 50 percent by avoiding mark-ups added by multiple brokers involved in each transaction in that market. He claimed that the company’s direct booking model is better value than rival sites such as FlyVictor, which charges flight bookers 5 or 10 percent of the charter cost.

Since its launch in 2014, Charterscanner claims to have been used to book more than 140 flights with a combined value of around €4 million ($4.5 million). Currently only around half a dozen of the operators registered so far are paying the monthly fees, but Zenov said more will be paying once they are routinely getting “around two to four flights per month” from the portal. He claimed that the site provides a more efficient way for operators to connect directly with customers, rather than having to generate multiple quotes for brokers.

Customers are carefully screened to ensure that they are genuine end-user consumers, rather than charter brokers. In the U.S., Charterscanner will be available by invitation only, because, as Zenov explained, it is harder for the company to check the backgrounds of clients in this market. He claims that more than 1,000 customers are now using the system in Europe and the Middle East. The company also has offices in Moscow and Vienna, and is planning to open another in the UK.

According to Zenov, Charterscanner meets face-to-face with all operators wanting to list aircraft on the site and accepts only aircraft operated under a commercial air operator certificate. The company insists on seeing evidence that aircraft are correctly maintained and insured.

Zenov told AIN that falling fuel prices have done little to reduce charter flight-hour rates and he doubts prices will come down in a market that is still largely driven by late bookings. However, he does believe that consumers are becoming more price conscious and less willing to accept the inflated cost of flights booked through a broker. “The market is not as good as it was before and now everybody wants to book at the best possible price,” he concluded.