Can anyone tell me how DayJet is doing? Are they growing and profitable? Is there really a big cost savings for passengers.
Thanks

 

Sorry Red Barron,

Our brother and sister pilots at Dayjet are not doing so well:

• Cutting fleet by more than half as Dayjet scales back operations
• 25 pilots have been furloughed

Hopefully things will improve for them soon.

Good Luck to all of them, and to us!

In Unity,

B727DRVR

 

It is never great to hear someone is not doing well. To me it seems like a lot of this point to point VLJ stuff is going to be tough to remain profitable.

 

this can't be due to rising costs.....my own 2 cents...i always thought that business model would fail miserably.

 

From the May 6th AVweb Alert I got.


Start-up air taxi operator Dayjet has announced it will "scale back" its immediate growth plans and lay off employees in all areas of its operations. In an email release today, company founder and CEO Ed Iacobucci did not detail the numbers of people let go. Iacobucci blamed weak capital markets and not the company's early performance for the decision. He said expanding the company to the point of profitability would require a $40 million capital infusion and he apparently couldn't find that money. "I won't dwell on this point, but suffice it to say that given the current state of the U.S. capital markets, the timing of our planned financing could not have been worse," he said.
Iacobucci said the "proof-of-concept phase" the company is now in has proved the market is there for the small-jet people mover system he envisioned but it has to grow from its current fleet of 28 aircraft serving 11 "Dayports" to as many as 50 aircraft branching out from up to 30 hubs to be profitable and that's why it needed the $40 million. While DayJet seems confident that it will eventually find the money and markets it needs, the larger question might be what the delay in doing so will do to Eclipse Aviation. DayJet is reported to be Eclipse's largest customer with orders for 1,400 of the estimated 2,500 aircraft on Eclipse's order book. Calls requesting comment from Eclipse were not immediately returned.


I still think it is a great concept, but the fact that I declined a job with them just 2 months prior is just further proof that God takes care of idiots like me.

 

same here...my procrastination about taking a new job finally paid off. Hopefully this is the worst of it to come for them.

 

you have to love the proverb...there is a way that seems right to a man...and its path surley leads to destruction

a man's step's are ordered by God

 

Don't call me "shirley"! By the way, you might want to spell check yourself.....

God doesn't order my steps, he merely grants me the ability to choose for myself and measure the repercussions.

Good luck to all those at Dayjet, it's going to be a rough year for everyone and the industry in general!

 

Saw the founder (Ed I.) on CNBC Fast Money on Friday (july 11). He said Dayjet's still doing fine, just had to scale back to less-aggressive expansion plans when expected funding didn't materialize. He believes that even though the economy is struggling, DayJet's business will be minimally affected because most of the clients are those that are in core businesses, that is businesses in which the work has to get done regardless of the economy (lawyers, accountants, etc).

Of course, what the founder says and what is reality could be two different things. I was in Boca a few weeks back and saw 12 planes sitting on the ramp. It's got to be hard to make money if that much of the fleet isn't moving.

 

Good article about them in this month's "Airliners" magazine. I think they hitched their wagon to the wrong fleet type personally. The Citation Mustang would've been smarter. The eclipse -- nice avionics or not -- just does not have the appearance of a comfortable or substantial looking airplane.