Back in 2001, James Fallows predicted, in a front-page article in the Atlantic Monthly, that the real future of air travel in America would be, not the huge airliners operating out of major commercial airports, but smaller “air taxis” using municipal airports.
It didn’t happen – not nearly as fast as Fallows predicted, anyway – but now, as Fallows reports in this month’s AM, there’s a new wave of “air taxi” service, led by companies such as DayJet, which use highly sophisticated computer models for planning and scheduling. Is this it for real this time?
That article is at least a couple of weeks out of date. DayJet is scaling way back, with significant layoffs - never good news for a startup. They’re finding what so many other aviation entrepreneurs have found, that having a “cool idea” does not create a market.
There’s nothing new about on-demand air charter service, no matter what you call it. Having jets that are less economical over those kinds of routes than older turboprops, with the current fuel price regime, and for that matter smaller ones that don’t even make up for it in comfort, is not a market-driven strategy.
I don’t buy the costs quoted in the low hundreds per person for a relatively long trip. There was an article in an aviation magazine a couple of years ago that covered an actual, function air taxi service. I believe it was based in South Carolina. Their planes were piston driven four seaters and the cost was something like $100 per hour but billed even when it was on arrival or waiting on the ground. People use the service but it almost has to be wealthy business people that have a big need to be somewhere quickly or as close to direct as possible. The market is there but limited.
I don’t see how you can operate jets based of the same business model. Startup costs and operating costs are simply too high. You could be looking at thousands of dollars an hour depending on the size of the jet. It is hard to share the costs under this model because who needs to travel from Richmond, VA to Greenbow, AL on a given day? The only way that would make sense is large corporate groups and they already have other options.