Air taxi companies waiting in the wings

The others waiting in the air taxi rank
By Jeffrey Decker


Backers and operators of the numerous air taxi start-ups are eager for production of very light jets to accelerate so their business models can be put to the test and they can turn investment into profit.

In early July Linear Air received its first Eclipse 500, which the Massachusetts company intends to put into service immediately as the first Eclipse in air-taxi operation anywhere. “Our team couldn’t be more excited to be the first to offer the Eclipse to the travelling public,” says president and chief executive William Herp. Linear Air has another 30 on order to supplement its fleet of six eight-passenger Cessna Caravan single-turboprops.

The two latest Caravans arrived in the past three months, and their two-pilot crews operate from small airports near Boston and White Plains, New York. On 2 April operations began from Manassas, close to Washington DC’s Dulles International airport, and in June service expanded to central North Carolina. Linear also operates seasonally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, in addition to providing per-seat seasonal service to Nantucket from Boston and New York.

Since 2005, Linear has steadily expanded its service to over 500 destinations throughout Canada, the Caribbean and the north-east USA, extending down the Eastern seaboard. Within five years the company aims to have 1,000 pilots operating 300 aircraft.

While problems with pitot freezing have delayed the Eclipse’s entry into service, weather issues also contributed to the fall of Point2Point, an air taxi start-up in North Dakota. In May, founder John Boehle wrote to the city of Bismarck, announcing a restructuring due to “the inability of the airline to reliably dispatch aircraft due to inclement winter flying conditions”. He blamed delays in US icing certification for the Diamond DA42 Twin Star, which is already approved in Europe. Boehle also cited a lack of revenue.

Other potential start-ups are cautious. Pogo is planning to enter the market using Eclipses, but will not launch until the air-taxi sector is better established.

Magnum Jet is aiming for a 2008 start using the Adam A700, for which Adam touts a toilet and cabin space as its main advantages over the Eclipse.

There is no toilet on the Cirrus SR22, but that has not stopped SATSair from operating 26 of the four-seat piston singles and growing to 1,800 passengers a month from 1,000 in October last year. Vice-president Phil Quist says customers are glad to avoid major airports when they fly. “We are seeing new customers come to aviation. We continue to see new customers come into the air cab market that in the past would only drive to their meetings or vacation,” he says.
SATSair’s service area has grown to include all of Florida and reaches to Arkansas and Pennsylvania. It overlaps with the service area of Imagine Air, a smaller air-taxi service that stops midway through Florida in the south.

Haroon Qureshi, Imagine Air director of marketing and sales, says he does see other providers as competitors, but “with something like this in its infancy, with the market so huge, we really see it as helping each other out. We’re not going to be at each other’s throats for another 10 years.”

Imagine also operates SR22s, five currently, and intends to add three Eclipses, set for delivery in mid-2008. “If they perform how we like, we’ll put in a bigger order,” he says. A future Cirrus order could bring two more each month to build a total Imagine fleet of 120 aircraft in five years.

Service will expand steadily westward.The Lawrenceville, Georgia-based service launched on 10 April and booked its 100th three months later. Imagine does not always use price as a selling point. “Our pricing is competitive to the airlines on certain routes. Atlanta to Dallas, or Atlanta to California, we don’t compete with them on that. What we specialise in is saving people the hassle of the large airports by flying out of their back yard,” says Qureshi. Average passenger load has been 1.7 per flight in the three passenger seats in each Cirrus. Imagine does offer $199 specials to fill empty legs, and up to 20% off with pre-paid flight cards.

The European air taxi market, meanwhile, is estimated to be worth €1 billion($1.38 billion) annually, and interest was high at a conference on very light jets in Vienna in June. Stefan Vilner, chief executive of Dublin-based Jetbird, praised the 21 June launch of the Air Taxi Association (ATXA), saying: “We look forward to using our market leadership position with the ATXA to emphasise the importance of private air-taxi travel with the operational efficiencies of low-cost carriers.” Vilner also heads ELFAA, the low-cost carrier association in Europe. Although the company will not launch until 2009, Jetbird has orders for 100 Embraer Phenom 100s, which, its says, was selected partly because it has a lavatory on board. The service will be focused on London-Rome flights.

A deal for 180 Eclipses marked the birth of a still unnamed air taxi service that is to begin operation by the end of this year from a base in Turkey.The 120 firm orders and 60 options was placed by Eclipse’s eastern European distributor ETIRC, which is founding the service with Atasay, a luxury-goods company based in Turkey.