Traveling the Metaverse by Land, Air, Sea, and Rail

Black Purrl Airlines, eponymously named after the founder's black domestic short-hair cat, Purrl, was founded in September 2023 as a project to move people across the SecondLife metaverse grid using means other than teleportation. There had been a large presence of air, or maritime travel providers in SecondLife for many years, but few were providing transport using all the modes available, be it land, air, sea, or rail. After briefly joining with a larger air provider in May 2024, and seeing the constant churn of personnel in the travel world in SecondLife, Black Purrl once again took to the skies on its own - this time, with a much bigger plan.

An idea was formed to not only provide free daily travel across the grid through travel groups such as Travel & Adventure, but to also offer travel services, hotel spaces, and live service restaurant service, in exchange for SecondLife's own currency, the Linden Dollar. Black Purrl established areas of operations on each continent of the SecondLife grid, where employees of the company and partner owner-operators alike, could maintain craft in a ready state to enable them to post trips across the grid without charge for the "prims" (SecondLife's object measurement) they utilized. In addition, the pool of pilots, sea captains, rail engineers, and drivers, receive pay for each free passenger trip they make, from the revenue generated through the additional services. If there is any overage, it is diverted into in-group giveaways and friendly contests designed each time to reward a different pool of people within the group.

The primary focus is on the passenger experience. Unlike many, the goal is to never leave a passenger behind. Each passenger is greeted in a professional and friendly manner. SecondLife embodies the mantra of "Dream it? Be it." Passengers have ranged from regular human avatars, to miniature cats, dogs, and even full-size horses, and any special considerations are accommodated wherever possible.

Black Purrl was accepted for the SecondLife 22nd Birthday celebrations this year, as the only travel provider, and has also worked in conjunction with the Michael J Fox Foundation and American Cancer Society official SecondLife charities, through various festivals and conventions, showing people the sights of the simulated builds from a different perspective and providing unique views and photography opportunities for the artisan community.

All of this has resulted in Black Purrl become a self-sustaining model of 19 different people and 7 different travel providers at the time of writing, all working towards the same goal and sharing from the Linden revenue generated from the business model,which can be exchanged in the SecondLife Marketplace for other vehicles, clothing, avatar upgrades, furniture, and even housing. Not content to rest on their laurels, Black Purrl constantly seeks to try and innovate travel methods and tap unused markets, even creating it's own. Recent forays into airship travel are being joined with sightseeing undersea adventures in new, highly modified passenger submarines, as such an example.

With this in mind, Black Purrl has recently been working on combining different travel modes to reach parts of the SecondLife grid that aren't reachable by a single method. For example, flying passengers to a waiting bus where there's no airport beyond, or busing passengers to rail services where there are no more usable roads, or transporting passengers by boat to remote islands. In addition to combining travel modes to service more of the grid, the company has established relationships with other simulations in SecondLife, such as navigable music clubs, destinations such as golf courses, theme parks, and the like, so that they don't just move people across the grid from one point to another, they transport them to destinations where they have something to experience at the end of their journey.

Miss Karlie, the group's founder, gave it the slogan of "Going Places", which she says seeks to epitomize the Black Purrl ethos, it's day to day operations, and its future in the metaverse.

It's clear to see that in this case, it seems to fit.