The arrival of Virgin Charter and Sentient’s PrivateJets.com heralded a new era in private jet charter. Launched within two months of one another, the two websites offer consumers the ability to search for and book charter flights online, in much the same way that travelers can book commercial flights.

PrivateJets.com and Virgin Charter find themselves pitted against the first generation of online charter booking services, such as CharterX. While CharterX has the advantage of being the first player on the scene, its underlying technology lags behind the newer entrants. For one, CharterX simply provides estimates for a specific trip, and only connects consumers with the charter providers for the final booking and payment. With the entry of Virgin Charter and PrivateJets.com, consumers now have access to an end-to-end system for searching, booking and paying for charter flights.

At least that’s the promise. While each of these new entrants seeks to simplify the process of charter booking, the two sites employ different models. PrivateJets.com maintains real-time inventories of each of the charter providers in its network in addition to that of parent company Sentient Flight Group’s fleet to provide instantaneous quotes for a trip request. Virgin Charter, on the other hand, passes on the details of each trip request to its charter network providers, who then may return a quote. So how do the two sites compare in their functionality and user friendliness? Halogen Guides Jets took a test drive of each site, submitting multiple trip requests. Here’s our first look at the usability of the sites. Our next article will focus on the specific trips we searched for and which site returned the best fare.

General Interface

A strike has to go against PrivateJets.com for only being compatible with Internet Explorer. If you load the page with another browser, such as Firefox or Safari, major formatting issues make the site essentially inoperable. Considering that Internet Explorer isn’t available on Macs, it would seem that PrivateJets.com is alienating a sizeable, not to mention wealthy, segment of fliers. That aside we’d still have to give the nod to Virgin Charter in this category. With its pleasing palette of red and white, punchy copy and uncluttered interface, the Virgin Charter site manages to connote the strength and security—as well as the fun—of the Virgin brand.

Search Tools

Each site allows you to enter the basics of your flight request including departure time, departure city, destination city, return time (if necessary) and number of passengers. You can also detail some finer details like plane type, manufacturer and, most importantly, luggage requirements, so you’ll be sure that those multiple sets of golf clubs will actually fit on the plane. PrivateJets.com also allows you to search for charter planes with specific amenities, such as DVD players and microwaves. Virgin Charter provides a text box where you can add any additional requests.

Virgin Charter also allows you to look for flights that take off and land at airports in a close vicinity to the ones you entered. Flights in and out of a city’s smaller municipal airfield may make much more sense than using a major international airport, but with PrivateJets.com in order to take advantage of this, you’ll need to know the exact airport code.

Flight Results

Both sites returned a fair number of results for each route that we requested, but if you’re a bargain hunter, look elsewhere. As expected, prices quoted were well in line with what we’ve come to expect for charter flights, such as Virgin Charter’s return of a $30,000 quote from ATI Jet Inc. on a roundtrip flight to Aspen from Houston aboard a Learjet 55. PrivateJets.com does have the advantage of returning quotes immediately. With Virgin Charter, you have to wait for the individual charter operators to provide a quote which can happen in minutes or take several hours. That said, it is rare that anyone booking a charter flight would choose to book a trip without some time to reflect on their choice, so waiting for quotes to roll in isn’t that much of an inconvenience. When a quote is a available you’ll receive an email alert that directs you back to the Virgin Charter website. Also worth noting: PrivateJets.com does not automatically save the results of your searches, so unless you manually save your search results, or choose to hold a booking for three hours, they’ll be gone if you navigate away from the page.

While both of these sites are still in their infancy, they are attracting the attention of private fliers, or at least those who dream of leaving commercial aircraft behind. In fact, Virgin Charter received so many search requests after its launch that it now qualifies new users before sending along flight quotes in an effort to keep their charter operators from being inundated by requests from mere lookey-loos. But even as private flight booking goes more high-tech, Virgin Charter handles this extra step the old fashion way, via telephone.