This is a First Look: It's the first time any news outlet or blog has covered this startup. You can read more First Looks here. (We do this a lot.)
It's an all-too-common situation during the holidays: You're traveling back home, and your flight gets delayed for several hours. Worse, it gets canceled. Then you have to go through the pain of rebooking a flight, losing precious time and sometimes paying more than you would like.
"Freebird enables travelers to skip the line and choose a new ticket on any airline, book it for free, and ultimately get to the people and places that matter most."
A new Cambridge startup called Freebird wants you to worry no more: The startup released its namesake mobile app today that will instantly book you a new flight on any airline at no extra cost in the event of cancellation, four-hour delay or missed connection. However, while the new flight will be free, you will need to pay a flat fee to use Freebird's service, and it has to be purchased more than two days before the scheduled flight. In a way, it's kind of like insurance for flight disruptions, but unlike traditional travel insurance, it doesn't pay you out for the cost of the canceled flight.
In Freebird's Thursday announcement, it also revealed that it has raised a $3.5 million round from General Catalyst, Accomplice, Slow Ventures and "strategic angel investors."
There's no doubt that Freebird's service is being released at an opportune time—during the holiday season—and it acknowledges that in its Thursday announcement.
Based on its own analysis, the startup said 250,000 travelers on average deal with canceled flights each Thanksgiving holiday and that 3 million travelers face delays of more than 30 minutes, which, combined, translates into 6 million hours lost during Thanksgiving travel.
“We all travel for important reasons–especially during the holiday season,” Ethan Bernstein, Freebird's co-founder and CEO, said. “Yet when a flight disruption occurs, the rebooking process can leave us feeling helpless and frustrated. Freebird enables travelers to skip the line and choose a new ticket on any airline, book it for free, and ultimately get to the people and places that matter most. Our mission at Freebird is to empower business and leisure travelers year-round, during the holiday season, through winter, and beyond.”
Bernstein, who founded with startup with CTO Sam Zimmerman, previously worked at Expedia as a senior manager for corporate development. On his AngelList profile, he describes himself as an experienced travel industry professional and a business school dropout (presumably from Harvard Business School, which is listed in the profile with a 2016 graduation date). Zimmerman's previous job was as a data scientist for Boston-based PowerAdvocate, a firm that provides business intelligence for the energy industry.
Here's how the mobile tool works: You go to www.getfreebird.com and you pay a flat fee of $19 to cover a one-way flight or $34 to cover a roundtrip flight after you confirm your flight's itinerary. The tool will instantly notify you if your flight has been disrupted and will let you rebook "in less than 30 seconds" on your mobile device.
Freebird said the fees are part of a winter travel and launch promotion. After the promotion ends, the fees will vary flight-by-flight and will be determined by the startup's proprietary algorithm that predicts the risk of flight disruptions for millions of flights per year, the startup said, but they will typically be under $30 for one-way.
