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Prepared exclusively for VLJ Magazine® by David Whitmore
Since the last report in this space, air taxi operations using the Eclipse 500 VLJ have started by DayJet in Florida and North American Jet in the Mid-West. Linear Air in the Northeast has begun their acquisition of Eclipse 500 to expand their existing operations. Breakdown of Operators by Type
Type I: Operators who own or control everything - the aircraft, pilots, reservations - DayJet (Florida) - Eclipse Aviation's largest known customer. After Florida, plans
- expansion into Southeast.
- Earthjet - will fly its own designed jet air taxi (heavier than a VLJ)
- Linear Air (Northeast & Virginia) - has acquired first Eclipse 500s
- North American Jet - uses Eclipse 500s
- POGO (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley and Carolinas) - plans to use Eclipse 500s
- Waypoint (USA) - plans to use Eclipse 500s, Cessna Mustangs, and/or Embraer Phenoms
- YourJet - plans to use Diamond D-Jets
Type II: Brokers, network operations, or aggregators who contract with various aircraft owners, and have reservation systems to marry them to flying passengers. All size and type aircraft are involved with these firms. Non-VLJ Air-Taxi Operator Progress Report
Several operators have been using new single-engine propeller planes, the most prominent being SATSair in the Southeast. Other newer firms serving the Northeast and Southeast are Open Air (Washington, DC area) and ImagineAir (Atlanta, GA area). Common to all three is that hourly fares are charged only for passenger flight time (no repositioning fees) and the Cirrus four-seat plane with parachute is used. Also using the Cirrus aircraft is AirQuest Aviation (Butler, PA) serving portions of the Northeast/Southeast, and Scanlon Aviation (Novato, CA) in the West. Copyright 2007 VLJ Group LLC. |
