Flightstore Takes Off With $4.3M First Round Funding

LONDON — Brighton-based Flightstore has developed software that will enable airlines to offer passengers online shopping during flights
Flightstore offers airline passengers online shopping malls. Users enter malls when they want to make a purchase, they type in the address to where the item is to be sent and then swipes a credit card down a standard aircraft handset. The order is then encrypted at the seat making it fully secure and recorded at the aircraft file server. It’s then beamed down to FlightStore’s ground server via satellite (SATCOM) and on to the retailers’ own systems.

The retailers process the credit card and despatch the goods through their existing delivery system. According to Flightstore the principal is similar to the way a PC game works – the data is uploaded into the passenger’s seat and then downloading after the passenger has finished.

The money raised will be used for additional product development and marketing.

To date the company has one customer – the Austrian airline Lauda Air. Flightstore will launch its first service within the year offering the airline’s passengers goods from high street store GadgetShop. The venture is in talks with a number of retailers to add them to the list, companies such as Blue Room Loudspeakers and Mulberry.

This latest round of funding was co-led by Matrix Private Equity and Pi Capital. Talisman and Yeoman Investment Trust also invested in the round.