Dayjet's Coming Out Party

Recently, I received an invitation from Dayjet in Boca Raton Florida.  They invited me to see their new plane and facilities on May 19th 2007.  For those of you who don't know Dayjet, they are a per-seat airline using the latest low cost jets from Eclipse Aviation.  The Eclipse 500.  The jets themselves sell for about $1.5MM and use Pratt & Whitney engines.

Here's what I learned:

• Dayjet will initially operate out of 5 Dayports: Boca Raton, Pensacola, Tallahassee, Lakeland, and Gainesville, FL
• You can fly to any airport within 1,000 miles but if you don't fly to one of those dayports, you'll have to rent the entire plane and pay to get it back to a dayport.
• Rates per seat depend on your flexibility.  If you give them 24 hours notice and are flexible (within 6 hours) it can be as low as $260.00 from Boca to Lakeland each way.
• The plane only has 5 seats (they took the 6th seat out for "comfort") but two of the 5 seats are reserved for the pilots leaving only 3 revenue seats available.  According to Dayjet, they will be profitable at 2 paying customers.
• You have to become a member in order to fly.  Membership is normally $250 per year, however, they have a special going on now to sign up new members.
• Top speed is 400 knots.

The whole plan sounds wonderful, however, I think it will be very difficult for Dayjet to make a lot of money.  First of all, taking out the 6th seat was a big mistake.  According to Dayjet, they needed the room for luggage.  I think this will make it very difficult for them to make money. 

Think about this.  In the best case scenario, Dayjet is paying for two pilots for every three passengers.  On average, the pilot per passenger ratio will be worse.  How much worse depends on a lot of factors such as demand, passenger flexibility, aircraft available, etc.

Three revenue seats is terrible from a passenger perspective.  If I want to bring my wife and two kids (doesn't everyone have two kids?) I'm out of luck.  Let's say you're a DINK (Dual Income, No Kids) and want to go to Tampa for the weekend, if you go with your spouse, you're fine, but if you want to go with another couple, you'll need to take two planes.  Also, if I want to go to Disney with my buddy and his kid, I can't do that either.

I wasn't really expecting two pilots for such a small plane.  I'm really shocked that Dayjet went this route.  Perhaps there are some insurance limitations that affect the number of pilots required.  In Belize, I've regularly taken planes with only one pilot so I know it must be possible.

The plane itself looks pretty cool except that they had to bolt on a third horizon indicator to be allowed to carry passengers.  This looks pretty awful.  The rest of the cockpit is all glass and very sleek.  Then they bolt on this ugly box on top.  It looks like a total afterthought (which it was).

I think if they could switch to one pilot, they have a great chance of making lots of money.  But with two pilots, they'll be struggling for a while.  I love, the concept of calling an air taxi and having them bring you from door to door.  I certainly wish Dayjet lots of luck and I will sign up for a membership.  Let's just hope they work out a great business model and keep those fares low.