Take Offs – VLJs in the News

New air taxi services are planned for take off this spring and summer covering Ohio, Kentucky and London although few have named the very light jets to be used. Those in London have pegged their services on the Cessna Mustang and Eclipse 500 while Our Plane begins offering Eclipse service in Jacksonville...

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New air taxi services are planned for take off this spring and summer covering Ohio, Kentucky and London although few have named the very light jets to be used. Those in London have pegged their services on the Cessna Mustang and Eclipse 500 while Our Plane begins offering Eclipse service in Jacksonville.

WayPoint Corp.
Waypoint Corp will cover a 500-mile radius of Columbus, Ohio’s capital, beginning in July, although it has yet to name the VLJ it will use, except to say its VLJs will seat between three and five passengers.
Based in New Albany, Waypoint will offer the new flights with Columbus-based and family owned Lane Aviation a full service FBO founded in 1935, which will staff the aircraft. Waypoint will provide point-to-point, on-demand, per-aircraft, two-pilot operations for regional travel with pricing comparable to a full-fare airline coach ticket; at half the cost of traditional charter, according to its website. The site pictures an Eclipse 500 but also provides links to the Cessna Mustang and Embraer Phenom 100 websites.
Waypoint’s site also touts its VLJ management and the fact it is looking for additional FBO partners beyond Lane, which has operatons at Port Columbus and Rickenbacker International airports.
"We're going primarily for the business traveler who would otherwise go and purchase a full-fare coach ticket," President Steven Brechter told the Columbus Dispatch. "Every day at Port Columbus, there's an average of 100 people that walk up to the counter to buy a full-fare ticket to a destination within 500 miles. We are concentrating on destinations that are otherwise hard to get to."
Brechter hails from NetJets where he served as COO from 2000 to 2005. NetJets already has an operation at Port Columbus. Joining him on the executive team is Howard Brumm, another NetJets alum who served as manager of maintenance. At Waypoint he will serve as vice president of maintenance. The team is rounded out by Executive Vice President David Humphries, who was general manager of AAR Corp and executive vice president and chief operating officer of the now-defunct, Miami-based Safire Aircraft Company, a VLJ development company which suspended operations in 2004.
Funding comes from private equity placements thus far and the company is currently raising additional funds through another private offering. The organization expects it will be managing a nine-aircraft fleet of privately-owned VLJs by year’s end and projects it will manage 25 by 2009.
Waypoint expects to have two or three VLJs on hand offering them for a flat fee of $2,000 an hour, Brechter told local press.

YourJet
With the area just south of Louisville, Ky. booming with additional jobs at Fort Knox and Akebono, YourJet hopes to capitalize on it by providing per-seat, on-demand air taxi services using Very Light Jets for about the same costs as a first class ticket. It also hopes to launch this summer covering a 600-mile radius of its base at Elizabethtown which was served in the 1980s by Piedmont Airlines and Delta. It has not named the very light jet it expects to use, except to say it will seat six passengers. However, CEO Todd House told the News Enterprise that the company will start with twin-engine propeller planes, expected by April, but hopes to have “dozens of VLJs” by 2012.
“YourJet represents a paradigm shift in the air travel industry,” boasts its website. “By utilizing cutting edge technologies embodied in the Very Light Jet (VLJ), advanced avionics platforms, real-time logistics optimization software and Web 2.0 concepts, YourJet is disrupting the status quo in commercial air travel.”

Mustangs Take Britain w/ New Operators, Phenoms for Jet Bird
Blink and London Executive Aviation (LEA) are pioneering the use of the four-seat Cessna Mustang in the development of new air taxi services in Britain, while Jet Bird is creating an air taxi/airline company to serve popular routes. The three follow BIKKAIR, which has also chosen Cessna Mustang for the service it was set to launch last month. Related Story
Blink has 30 Mustangs on order while LEA has 10 with its first aircraft touching down at Farnborough recently. “We plan to bring in 10 a year for the next few years,” Patrick Margetson-Rushmore, chief executive told The London Times, which noted that fees will reduce current charter costs by £1,000 at about £3,200 for London-Paris return charter.
VLJs have already spawned two low-cost charter services – Blink and Jet Bird, both of whom recently koined the European Air Taxi Association. Related Story
Blink was co-founded by Peter Leiman, who acts as managing director, and Cameron Ogden. They have alternatively been described as investment bankers and Harvard Business School grads. They hope to launch this summer after its first of 30 Mustangs arrives in May, while Jet Bird, a combination air taxi/airline, has committed to 100 Embraer Phenoms to offer regular services on the most popular routes. Blink, which partnered with TAG Aviation (UK) at Farnborough Airport, has raised $30 million for the new operation while Jet Bird raised $150 million thanks to Irish financier Domhnal Slattery, according to the Times.
Leiman and Ogden launched plans on the back of a study they did for Wal-Mart which concluded that VLJs would cut the retailer’s travel budget by 25 percent even if it expanded private jet use to employees making as little as $50,000 a year. Their aim is to work for big companies who need to connect to secondary European cities at last-minute business class fares.
Blink developed an 800-point Destination Network throughout Europe. Its $90 million order, which makes it the largest Mustang operator, comes over the next 30 months at about one per month beginning in May. Related Story
Jet Bird plans to start flights next year, fashioning itself as the RyanAir of private operations. CEO Stefan Vilner identified 80 European destination and five hubs between London and Rome for its new service. “This is very much like the early days of low-cost airlines with Ryanair and Easyjet,” he told the Times. “There is an excitement about being in at the start of something new.”

First VLJ Comes to JAX
Advanced Disposal Services is leading the VLJ revolution at Jacksonville, Fla. after its aircraft management company Our Plane took delivery of its first Eclipse 500. ADS owns three of four fractional shares. Our Plane, Inc. has managed piston and turboprops for a decade. ADS provides garbage collection services in five states, making VLJ travel a necessity for efficient operations. President Charles Appleby told the Business Journal that his visits to three locations in a single day, trumps commercial airlines which would have taken him a week.
Our Plane’s quarter share for the $1.6 million Eclipse 500 is $400,000, according to the Journal, which said owners are guaranteed 150 hours annually. Our Plane has 21 Eclipse 500s on order. The Journal reported that additional costs include a $4,000 monthly fee covering aircraft management, insurance, and storage as well as scheduling and concierge travel services. Our Plane also charges $759 per hour of actual usage, and provides crew for about $600 per day. Target companies have revenues of between $10 million and $75 million annually.