The legendary Virgin Group – known for its music, mobile, and even space-travel endeavors – announced what BusinessWeek describes as “eBay for private jets.”

Virgin Charter is a new online marketplace that connects charter operators with private flyers. The new web portal allows passengers to negotiate, book and manage their flight online, and provides charter operators a steady stream of flyers who are comforted by the Virgin brand.

Virgin has positioned the venture as environmentally friendly since more efficient booking will reduce the number of empty flights. These empty legs are a key consequence of inefficient private jet travel and account for approximately 40 percent of charter jet traffic. This dovetails nicely with Richard Branson’s Virgin Fuels and Virgin Earth initiative.

The CEO of the new venture is Scott Duffy, formerly of Blue Star Jets. The service is currently “by invitation only,” but will be open to all later in the year. Like Blue Star Jets, Virgin Charter will not own or operate any of the aircraft, nor will it serve as a broker.

Helium Report’s Take It’s exciting to see major brands lend their credibility to the charter world. We concur with Virgin’s instinct that the charter world is well served by strong brands and a more seamless customer experience. Beyond its brand and forthcoming web portal, however, don’t expect Virgin to turn the charter world upside-down. The operation appears to be an upscale Blue Star Jets, with the same business model and a Blue Star vet at the helm. Regardless of your booking provider, you’re still tapping the same fleet of charter aircraft. You’ll want to get a clear understanding of the third parties to the deal: the aircraft owner, manager, flight crew and the charter operator. We’ve included a full list of due diligence questions in our Decision Guide to Private Jet Travel

We’re less impressed with the green halo that Virgin Charter awards itself. Every company in the charter world seeks to reduce empty legs, so in that sense everyone’s green. Further, more efficient booking ultimately means more flights overall. That’s a fairly brown shade of green.

One way to mitigate the environmental cost is through the purchase of carbon offsets. Helium Report found that it costs less than 1% of the flying cost per hour to fly carbon neutral.

Image from virgincharter.com