Richard Branson unveiled the latest cog in his branding empire today, Virgin Charter. The company’s online private aircraft charter marketplace is up and running. It looks to streamline the process of chartering a private jet, by aggregating a highly segmented market of jet charter operators and allowing fliers to search, compare and book flights in one place.

Any traveler who has used commercial airfare websites such as Travelocity or Orbitz will be immediately familiar with how to book a flight on Virgin Charter. Simply enter the details of a trip, including origin, destination, date of travel, number of passengers and preferred type of aircraft, and Virgin Charter begins getting price quotes from its network of charter operators around the country. Trip prices are returned in some cases instantaneously, particularly from larger operators with entirely computerized inventory and reservation systems, but results may trickle in over the course of several hours since some charter operators are decidedly low-tech. In fact, less than a third of charter operators are operated with fully computerized systems.

Prices will come from Virgin Charter’s network of 100 or so operators. Each of these operators are vetted for safety (using Wyvern/ARGUS certification) and quality by Virgin Charter, who has additionally partnered with JD Power and Associates to develop a Quality Ratings Program for a more comprehensive assessment. From there, trips can be booked directly through Virgin Charter. Currently, the company provides bookings for domestic flights, but is looking to expand its reach to international destinations as well.

Virgin Charter aims to be both a value proposition for its users, by cutting out the middle-men brokers who add as much as 20 percent to flight costs, as well as a simplifier of what is usually a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Booking a charter flight has no doubt been a thankless task delegated to unlucky assistants, likely faced with talking to multiple brokers over several days to coordinate travel plans and prices for a trip. According to Virgin Charter CEO Scott Duffy, cost may not in fact be the primary consideration when booking a particular flight. In the company’s testing phase, which tried out the service with a select group of private fliers, Duffy said he found that consumers more often than not picked the operator with the highest quality rating, rather than the one with the cheapest trip costs.

In addition to the cost savings and convenience factors, Duffy makes the case that the efficiencies Virgin Charter adds to the market could also be beneficial to the environment. Duffy has outlined a three-front approach for the company’s stance on environmental responsibility. On the most immediate level, Virgin Charter will organize the purchase of carbon offsets for charter flights. On top of this, fliers will be able to search for, and charter operators will be able to make available, so-called “dead-head” legs, which reposition aircraft before and after scheduled flights. By making these flights available, flyers can see substantial savings, operators can defray costs and both parties can rest a bit easier knowing that so much carbon dioxide wasn’t burned off into the atmosphere for nothing. As part of a long term environmental vision, a portion of Virgin Charter’s profits will also go towards Branson’s recently announced $3 billion pledge to combat global climate change.

Virgin Charter, which falls under the Virgin USA brand umbrella, is not the only presence in the emerging field of online jet charter booking. It will likely face its stiffest competition from Sentient Jet which launched its own jet-charter marketplace, Privatejets.com, last month. In addition to a network of operators, Sentient’s marketplace will rely on its own fleet of aircraft.

While this may seem to give an advantage to Sentient, who can use their fleet to meet excess demand (as well as defraying some of the cost of its unused aircraft from its jet card programs), Virgin Charter sees the absence of a proprietary fleet as a tactical advantage, as operators may be more likely to partner with them since they will not be regarded as a competitor. Virgin Charter’s edge will likely come from the strength of Virgin’s globally recognized brand. Operators will have an incentive to be associated with the prestige of the Virgin brand, and customers will be less reluctant to provide their credit card details for a $10,000 flight to a company whose logo they are used to seeing on billboards around the world. Of course, there’s no such thing as a sure sell, even with Virgin’s ubiquitous red and white logo attached to it—Virgin Cola anyone? But, with Mr. Branson’s success in commercial aviation, Virgin Charter looks to be a more than worthy competitor for Sentient.