[Travelandtourism] Conference Call with Matt Slosky ofSocialflights.com last night

Wed Jan 11 16:17:34 UTC 2012

Hello Cheryl and everyone,

I sent him information about our Non-Visual Web Accessibility Initiative. He 
said he would forward it to their Web team.

    For Michael did you use the "Create a Flight" form on the Web site. That 
is primarily for obtaining estimates for trips using different aircraft 
types and numbers of passengers. Again this is just for obtaining rough 
estimates of what your trip will cost. Cheryl and us tried it too and it 
works fine with screen readers. You will need to contact them via e-mail or 
by phone to get exact quotes from their air charter operators. Chances are 
Matt himself will respond to your inquiry but they have other "Social Flight 
Attendants" who can also obtain this information and answer any other 
questions you may have.

    Unless things have changed there was a captcha one had to deal with when 
creating an account. To say the least it was horrible! Mary has perfect 
hearing and she couldn't understand the image characters being read. The 
best way to describe it is like having to talk to someone in a crowded room. 
I'm sure we'll take this up with them in the coming months and suggest an 
alternative to that captcha assuming it's still in use. There are other ways 
to kill spam bots without locking out potential customers or in this case 
potential social fliers.

    Thanks for the kind words. There are two other lo-cost air charter 
services I can introduce to our division one of which offers a 
four-passenger jet for $999.00 per hour on certain days and in particular 
markets they serve. Really!! JetSuite Air bills  itself as "The Southwest" 
of private jet charter services. Visit their Web site at: 
http://www.jetsuite.com for more information.

    Greenjets has been in operation for several years. Like Social Flights 
Greenjets sells seats on private jets in particular markets and also sells 
empty legs in markets where per-seat pricing is not available. Visit their 
Web site at: http://www.flygreenjets.com for additional information.

    The face of private jet charter is changing and becoming available to 
more individuals. I felt that we as an organization needed to be sure blind 
persons wishing to fly privately would also have access to these services 
hence my suggestion to Cheryl that we invite Matt from Social Flights to 
hold a phone conference with us. I could write lots more on this subject but 
I need to leave in a while to take Johnny to the vet and get some groceries. 
All the best.

Peter Donahue

Peter Donahue

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "cheryl echevarria" <cherylandmaxx at hotmail.com>
To: "travelandtourism" <travelandtourism at nfbnet.org>; "Matt Slosky" 
<matt.slosky at socialflights.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: [Travelandtourism] Conference Call with Matt Slosky 
ofSocialflights.com last night

Well Peter Donahue and Matt have been working on these issues, they are well 
aware of it.
Peter, have you mentioned to Matt of how the NFB can assist, Matt and 
Socialflights.com to update there website.
Thank you for the feedback Michael. Would have loved you on the call last 
night thought to have asked these questions.
Mind you they do not have all the codes, and they are not the 3 letter codes 
that we travel agents use, they are smaller airports, not major ones, I had 
to ask and e-mail them to add ISP, which is Islip, NY, but they had East 
Farmingdale, which is a airport for smaller planes and not the commercial 
airlines.

Leading the Way in Independent Travel!

Cheryl Echevarria
http://www.echevarriatravel.com
631-456-5394
reservations at echevarriatravel.com

For daily updates read our blog at
http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com

> From: mbaldwin at gpcom.net
> To: travelandtourism at nfbnet.org
> Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:41:56 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Travelandtourism] Conference Call with Matt Slosky 
> ofSocialflights.com last night
>
> Sounds like it was a great call.
> I actually contacted social flights the other day about pricing something
> for us for our upcoming vacation. I have not heard back yet. But if we can
> fly and not have to deal with the crap from the TSA and commercial 
> flights,
> that would be great.
> I will try to keep everyone posted about it.
>
> So far I am not impressed with their website. I feel it needs some work, 
> but
> there is at least no captchas when trying to send a general contact to 
> them,
> which is what I had to do. There system did not recognize the city or
> airport code I wanted to fly out of. Then I found a place that had a drop
> down list of all the cities, Jaws was unable to open the drop down list 
> and
> scroll through the options. This needs to be worked out on their end I
> believe.
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: travelandtourism-bounces at nfbnet.org
> [mailto:travelandtourism-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of cheryl 
> echevarria
> Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 7:51
> To: travelandtourism; Matt Slosky; Echevarria Travelblog
> Subject: [Travelandtourism] Conference Call with Matt Slosky
> ofSocialflights.com last night
>
>
> Good morning all:
> What a great time we all had with Matt Slosky, COO, Chief Operating 
> Officer
> with Socialflights.com, we were hoping for a better turn out, but I am
> guessing people were busy.  I am also going to forward this to NYAGDU, 
> here
> in NY, since we had a few guide dog users from NY on the call last night.
> I just want to say thank you to Peter Donahue our Board Member, for
> introducing us to Socialflights.com.
> This service may not be good for everyone, or fit your pocketbook, but we
> are also going to hopefully be educating some of there operators as well.
> Matt, is all about learning about the National Federation of the Blind, he
> also mentioned that he has a therapy dog and knows the laws that his dog 
> is
> not a service animal.
> He will always be a friend of the travel and tourism division, and hope to
> have him back in the future on our calls.  It has been recorded, Mary
> Donahue our Secretary will be taking notes off the recording last night 
> and
> hopefully, Peter, will be able to download it to our website for others to
> listen to.
> It was a great success our first guest call, ever.  We are hoping in 
> Dallas
> to get him or a few operators to come to our meeting at the convention but
> we will see.
> Now, to the members of this list and the division.
> We want to hear from you, it is nice to have a division, many of us belong
> to one or two of them maybe more.
> So, we want to know, what you would like us to focus on, myself, and some 
> of
> my officers who are travel partners, have connections in the industry to 
> do
> this type of call in again. I am in talks with Andrew Garnett of Special
> Needs at Sea, his company does wheelchairs, scooters, oxygen, plus his
> company also did the braille for the Norwegian Gem, that I took a group on 
> a
> tour of back in October.
> So his company does a lot of different things for the disabled community.
> Also, I have Cathy Vazquez with NCL, and I can have her come on as well, 
> or
> possible one or two our my tour suppliers from different areas of travel.
> So, we need to hear from you, our members.
>
> Leading the Way in Independent Travel!
>
> Cheryl Echevarria
> http://www.echevarriatravel.com
> 631-456-5394
> reservations at echevarriatravel.com
>
> For daily updates read our blog at
> http://www.echevarriatravel.wordpress.com
>
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