Editors’ Note

Demitris Memos is a proven tech entrepreneur who believes that technology is most powerful when it simplifies everyday life. He is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of hoper. Before hoper, he led MarineTraffic, a global leader in maritime intelligence, scaling the platform until its acquisition by Kpler in 2023. An engineer by training and a licensed helicopter pilot, Memos brings a unique combination of operational insight, data-driven thinking, and marketplace expertise to aviation.

Company Brief

hoper (flyhoper.com) is a global booking platform for helicopter travel, offering private charters, shared flights, and scenic tours in the world’s most iconic destinations. From Greece to Los Angeles and Cape Town to the Alps, the platform aggregates vetted operators under a single interface with transparent pricing and instant booking – removing the complexity that has kept the helicopter charter market offline and out of reach.

Will you discuss your career journey?

For the past couple of decades, I’ve been drawn to technology as a way to create positive experiences and simplify everyday life. Before hoper, I led MarineTraffic, scaling the platform and team until its acquisition by Kpler in 2023. That experience showed me that you can build something meaningful and widely used, even starting from a relatively small place like Greece. More importantly, it reinforced my belief that technology is most powerful when it unlocks access and removes friction from everyday experiences. That’s ultimately what led me to hoper.

What was your vision for creating hoper?

hoper traces its roots to the moment I flew by helicopter to a wedding on the remote island of Patmos. While everyone else spent most of their day navigating ferries and connections, we arrived in an hour. That’s when the idea clicked: helicopter travel already existed, but it was inaccessible, fragmented, and effectively invisible unless you knew how to navigate it. With hoper, we set out to turn helicopters from a one-off luxury into actual transportation infrastructure. We introduced scheduled, shared helicopter flights that could be booked instantly – creating a model that sits between charter and commercial aviation. And I knew what we could achieve in Greece, we could scale to many other places around the world where the geography makes air travel the obvious solution. That’s why we set out to make vertical mobility accessible.

Will you provide an overview of hoper’s services and capabilities?

hoper is a global booking platform for helicopter travel, offering private charters, shared flights, and sightseeing tours. The platform aggregates vetted operators around the world (from Greece to LA and from Cape Town to the Alps) under a single interface with transparent pricing and instant booking. In Greece, we operate our own fleet, running a year-round service that connects Athens, Santorini, and Mykonos to 15 destinations across the Aegean. We integrate with travel partners – from hotels to agencies – so the experience extends beyond the flight itself, connecting the journey from departure to final destination.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities for growth?

Our expansion focuses on regions where geography and congestion make traditional transport inefficient, and where there is already a strong culture of premium travel. In the near term, we are planning to launch in New York in time for the US Open Tennis Championships. We’re also expanding in Europe, with a planned launch in Italy, to connect major coastal and urban destinations.

The broader opportunity is to build a globally connected network of short-haul routes that operate more like micro-airlines rather than one-off charter services. A key part of that is how we work with operators: beyond distribution, we help them optimize pricing, load factors, bringing a level of yield management that hasn’t traditionally existed in this market. Over time, this creates a new layer of transport infrastructure, where vertical mobility becomes a natural extension of how people move.

Will you highlight hoper’s focus and commitment to the highest safety standards?

Safety is the foundation of everything we do at hoper. In Greece, we operate as both an aircraft operator and a continuing airworthiness management organization, approved by the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority, in line with EASA standards. That means full responsibility across both flight operations and maintenance. Across our broader network, every operator on the hoper platform holds a valid Air Operator Certificate, maintains appropriate insurance, and fully complies with the regulations of their national aviation authority, while we also assess their standards and safety records before onboarding them. This allows us to scale globally without compromising quality or safety.

How critical has it been to build the hoper team?

Building the hoper team has been absolutely critical. What we’re building sits at the intersection of aviation, technology, and hospitality and that requires a very specific mix of talent. On one side, we need people who understand how to build and scale digital platforms and manage demand. On the other, we need deep operational expertise in aviation, particularly around safety, maintenance, and flight operations. Bringing those worlds together – and getting them to operate with the same standards and pace – has been one of the key challenges, and one of the main reasons we’ve been able to execute.

How do you focus your efforts leading hoper?

My focus is to create the conditions for the team to perform at the highest possible level: clear direction, fast decision-making, and ownership. One of the key lessons for me has been the importance of clarity. As a team, we need to be very clear about what we’re building and why hoper isn’t just about helicopters – it’s about redefining how people move and making a traditionally complex experience feel simple and accessible. When that vision is clear, it aligns everyone’s decisions and creates focus across the team. Equally important is speed. As an early-stage company, time is our most valuable resource. We have to move quickly and accept that not everything will be perfect. What matters is momentum. We’ve built a team that understands this – people who are comfortable taking ownership, acting decisively, and adapting as we go.

What are your priorities for hoper?

Our priorities for hoper are centered around scaling the network and laying the foundation for the future of aerial mobility. In the near term, 2026 is a pivotal year – particularly in Greece, which remains our core market. We’ve expanded our shared flight network to 15 destinations and more than 50 routes, with new additions like Naxos and Koufonisia launching for the summer season. The focus here is density: the more routes and destinations we add, the more efficiently we can operate, and the more useful the network becomes for customers.

Seasonal travel patterns are also a big opportunity, whether that’s summer island-hopping in Greece or ski travel in the Alps. We also see strong demand around major global events – such as the Monaco Grand Prix and the US Open Tennis Championships – where time, convenience, and experience are at a premium. As we deepen our presence in key markets like the U.S., expanding partnerships like those we have with Scott Dunn and Mandarin Oriental will be central to our growth.

Looking further ahead, we are actively preparing for the transition to eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft). While our focus today is on operating certified helicopters within existing infrastructure, everything we’re building – from demand patterns and booking systems to operator networks – is designed to support that evolution. As regulatory frameworks and technology mature, we expect adoption to accelerate toward the end of the decade.