Air-Taxi Venture Set
To Start Service in Mid-2006
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Subscribe now to The Wall Street Journal and get up to 8 weeks FREE

A venture that has studied how to build a flying-taxi service around an emerging fleet of six-seat microjets is expected to announce today that it has ordered 239 Eclipse 500 jets and hopes to begin service in mid-2006.

DayJet Corp., Del Ray Beach, Fla., quietly has operated under the codename Jetson Systems since 2002. The company plans to use the tiny jets in what it calls a "per-seat, on-demand" jet service. Passengers would book seats online and meet the planes at local airports, paying roughly the same as a regular airline full-fare coach ticket.

Unlike private jet services, which can cost thousands of dollars and are typically booked by wealthy individuals or companies, DayJet plans to operate under a shared-ride basis, meaning that customers must be willing to share the confines of a small jet with strangers.

DayJet executives say they still are studying which cities would be served first, but the company plans to focus on "underserved" regions where business travelers and others must jump through hoops to travel on regularly scheduled airlines. If the service succeeds, it hopes to expand coast-to-coast, focusing on trips of 500 miles and shorter. "In some parts of the country, there is no such thing as a day trip, and we want to change that," said Edward Iacobucci, DayJet's president and chief executive officer.

Before founding DayJet, Mr. Iacobucci was a longtime International Business Machines Corp. executive who later helped found Citrix Systems Inc.

The maker of the airplanes DayJet plans to use, Eclipse Aviation, of Albuquerque, N.M., is headed by former Microsoft Corp. executive Vern Raburn. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is one of Eclipse's major investors.

Mr. Iacobucci says that DayJet has raised $18.3 million and that it plans to raise an additional $10 million to $15 million this year. Mr. Iacobucci said DayJet's investors include a group of former Microsoft executives, as well as others.

DayJet's entry to the market comes a year after Pogo, a group led by Don Burr, founder of People Express Airways Corp., and Robert L. Crandall, former chief executive at AMR Corp. Pogo initially said it planned to use a jet built by closely held Adam Aircraft Industries of Denver, but Mr. Crandall said in a recent speech the company also was considering other manufacturers. Pogo expects to launch service in southern New England in the third quarter of 2006.

Mr. Iacobucci said in an interview that his company has spent the past three years working on a software program that will enable DayJet to have a fully automated online ticketing system that also will help dispatch the jet fleet efficiently.

Passengers would book flights by filling out information that includes how flexible their schedules are. If a passenger has some time to kill, it is conceivable that the jet may make one or two stops along the way to drop off other passengers who might be flying to the same general area. "The bigger the time window a passenger has, the lower the fare," Mr. Iacobucci said. Fares would range from about 75 cents a mile to about $3 a mile, comparable with full fares charged by scheduled airlines for coach and first-class tickets.

Before either venture can get off the ground, the new jets -- and the operating plans for the taxi companies -- must by certified as safe by the Federal Aviation Administration. Eclipse has three jets already flying and says it expects its jet to be certified by March 2006. Adam Aircraft officials didn't return telephone calls.

Subscribe now to The Wall Street Journal and get up to 8 weeks FREE