I had the chance to interview the founder and CEO of Richard Branson’s latest venture, Virgin Charter, Scott Duffy yesterday afternoon.

We spoke about Virgin Charter, the how and why of the opportunity they have, why it makes sense for people to use their services, and advice on how to invest in what is perhaps your own best investment, investing in yourself.

What Virgin Chart does in a nutshell is that it works with operators of private jets and and helps keep them filled with paying passengers. Quite often, a jet will take a people to their destination, and end up flying back to home base empty. So, rather than flying empty with no paying passengers, Virgin Charter lets people bid on these otherwise empty trips.

You can book jets like a Citation, Lear, Gulfstream and everything else in the modern jet fleet.

The jet operator receives basically found money and the new Virgin Charter customers get a great deal on travel. How is that for a win-win situation?

In a truly free capitalistic society, inefficiency usually gets solved by someone making a profit for solving it! –Andrew Anderson

This is a much more efficient use of resources don’t you think? You can also book a regular charter flight there as well. So if you have an aircraft or use charters, you should definitely look into what they have to offer.

Also, if you have never flown by private jet, there is nothing like it. It can literally save you a whole day when traveling. You are normally able to fly directly into smaller airports which are usually closer to your actual destination. There is no delay or hassle with running the security gauntlet while they pat down old ladies in wheelchairs and you don’t have to jostle for a cramped seat next to someone that has not discovered that new invention called deodorant.

You can actually get work done while flying. It is nice to arrive fresh and ready to go close that deal. If you ever want to make an impression with a potential client, have them pick you up at the airport as you step off your charter. They don’t have to know that it did not cost an arm and a leg, or better yet let them know that it didn’t. They will probably appreciate the tip the next time they travel and be impressed by your thrift and efficiency.

If you are traveling with a group of 8 to 10 people with your company, this can really be an economical way to travel, especially with last minute trips.

Here is the interview. (more…)

  I will be posting an interview that I did today with Scott Duffy, the founder and CEO of Virgin Charter, Sir Richard Branson’s latest adventure in Capitalism.  Check back tomorrow and find out what he has to say and listen to the interview here.

Learn the dollars and sense of what Duffy and Branson are up to and why their new venture is flying high.

Update: Ok heard back from then and and will post some info in the next few days.

I know that a lot of you have your own Jets or use charter services on a regular basis. Plus, there are many of you that don’t realize just how much sense they make in the right situation. So, hopefully I will be able to pass on more information soon straight from the horses mouth as it were.

If you are an early bird like me, perhaps you caught Sir Richard Branson this morning on Squawk Box talking about Virgin Charter?

There were more than a few interesting subjects discussed. First his official launch of Virgin Charter, which is a system to fill empty legs of Private Jets. It is basically a registration system that allows companies to put passengers on an otherwise empty Jet. Some paying customers is better than paying for fuel on and empty plane as it flies back to home base after dropping off people at their destination.

Virgin Charter is finally open for business as of today. If you have never flown by private jet, it is the way to go. With airport delays these days even on a one or two hour trip you can waste the better part of a whole day just getting somewhere.   You can check them out here at www.VirginCharter.com .

Whereas with a charter, you usually fly to a smaller airport that is much closer to your destination, and in many cases you can arrive only five minutes before you take off. This can literally save you a whole day’s worth of work.

Just think about this, if you have a whole day to work on what makes you money can you use that time to come up with an idea that will make you an extra $5,000 to $20,000 this year? If so, you probably just paid for your trip and then some.

If you take four or five people with you, the economics really makes sense when you add up what a whole days worth of lost production.

Branson also discussed the state of the economies around that world and the fact that he fully expects India to top 10% economic growth this year and China not to be far behind. While here in the US, we are going to be lucky to break 1%.

This should cause a great deal of concern. He rightfully points out that much of this can be contributed to governmental interference and protectionism that is going on here in the US.

He brought up the insane sugar subsidy that is causing America to pay nearly double the price for sugar as the world market, which in turn has caused us to use corn for producing ethanol which is 8 times less efficient per acre than sugar. This in turn has caused food prices to skyrocket. Have you seen what has happened to the price of a gallon of milk or a dozen eggs this year?

Talk about what I like to call the Stupidity Multiplier. 99.9% of all market malfunctions can be attributed to Government interference and the Stupidity Multiplier and he spoke about just a few more examples that are going on in the US.

He also spoke about the knee jerk protectionist restriction on foreign investments in US airlines and in other areas.

He rightfully points out that most of the US airlines are Dinosaurs that should have been extinct decades ago but continue to receive government bailouts no matter how badly they are run.

If you have ever flown on a decent foreign airline, you know how bad most of our airlines really are.

One other note, silver has topped $20 per ounce and to think that just a few short years ago it was at about half of that.

I am trying to get an interview with someone from Virgin Charter. We will see how responsive their PR people are.

With all of this in mind, knowing that the government is artificially keeping up grocery prices and oil prices here in the US is there a way that you can take advantage of this? Are they going to blame everyone and everything else and do even more harm trying to “fix” things? Could be some great plays coming up.

Overall, you can look at energy prices continuing to rise at least 10% short term and I predict we might see oil top $110, to even $120 a barrel before the year is out.