Florida company offers membership for evacuation flights this hurricane season

TAMPA, Fla. - A Florida company is offering residents a new way to evacuate storms this hurricane season by selling memberships that guarantee seats on its evacuation flights out of the Tampa (TPA) and Sarasota (SRQ) airports. 

PriorityEvac membership details

What we know:

For $1,250 a person, Tampa Bay area residents can purchase a membership through PriorityEvac. This fee covers evacuation flights for two storms a year.

"Each side of Florida is segmented, so parties on the West coast have their own two-event coverage, and parties on the East coast have their own two-event coverage," PriorityEvac founder Jason Murgio said. 

Pets are allowed at $125 per animal. 

"Our target audience are people that live in Florida that are affected by hurricanes," Murgio said. "That could be families. That could be retirees. It could be people that have family — mothers or parents — that are living in Florida but may live outside of the state that are worried how are they going to get out."

Dig deeper:

The membership fee does not include return flights from Atlanta back to Florida. 

"The reason for that is, depending upon the nature of the storm and where that storm hits, you may have people that want to repatriate two days after the storm. You may have people that are more affected or without power, may have had damage to their properties that could need to stay for seven to 10 days, depending upon the circumstances," Murgio said. 

If there are no storms during the hurricane season, residents will have to buy a new membership for the following year. 

"We have paid for these planes to be available whether we fly them or not. And so that is part of the cost of the program. But we see that as working because the whole point is having that capacity prearranged," Murgio said. "Probably the biggest failure, whether it's commercial or private aviation, is you're all scrambling at the last minute. Everybody's trying to get the same resource. What we've done is allocate that prior to the start of the season."

How the company was born

The backstory:

Murgio got the idea for the company after watching friends experience nightmare scenarios trying to evacuate out of Florida. 

"They weren't able to get on the same flights. The prices were very excessive — north of $1,500 for a one-way ticket. And I really felt there's a better way to do this," Murgio said. 

To time the flights perfectly, the company relies on a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel who was the NORAD chief of operations and a retired National Hurricane Center lead forecaster — as well as other staff — to track exactly when tropical storm force winds will hit. This ensures their planes – which are operated by Global Crossing Airlines — are in position before members are notified of their evacuation flight. 

Membership cost

The other side:

Some may say this membership is expensive.

Murgio told FOX 13 that at $1,250 a person for two storm evacuations, that breaks down to $625 per flight. 

"And I think if you compare that to what we saw during some of the storms from the commercial airlines where they're charging $1,500 to $3,000 a ticket, this very well could fall into a less expensive option than trying to scramble and maybe having different family members on different planes," Murgio added. "So, the price point is something that we looked at very hard, and we wanted to make it reasonable but recognize we are securing aircraft before the season. We are having that pre-contracted seat available, and the economics reflect that."

Local nonprofit Project Dynamo

What you can do:

Part of the membership fee goes to helping Project Dynamo, a local nonprofit organization that rescues Americans from disasters and conflict zones — but Project Dynamo is also handling logistics and communications for PriorityEvac.