What a difference a day makes
Posted Date: 01/09/2007
Issue: Executive & VIP Aviation International September 2007
Publication: Executive & VIP Aviation International
Pioneered in the US by DayJet, per-seat, on-demand executive air travel will provide relief for the individual locked into an exhausting regime of business travel by road or through hubs. Ed Iacobucci is the President & Chief Executive Officer of DayJet. He explains his strategy further
“We intend to develop the on-demand market for the next tier of travellers below executive officers by reducing the cost and providing a more streamlined service,” explains Ed Iacobucci, President & Chief Executive Officer of DayJet. “The essence of DayJet is that it is a “per-seat, on-demand service,” reinforces Iacobucci, explaining that all DayJet’s missions will be based on members’ requests and not on preconceived ideas about schedules and hubs. “But DayJet will not offer entire aeroplane charter or a concierge service; it is a utilitarian point-to-point service. No special requests will be accommodated – every seat is the same as any other seat,” he says. Iacobucci is keen to point out the dearth of similarity between DayJet and the fractional concept. “The fractional concept has, as its genesis, the ownership experience and provides guaranteed uplift,” he says. “If we tell you we will fly you, then we will guarantee that we will fly you; but at DayJet you can be rejected if there is no capacity left in the system.” Airlines and DayJet also have little in common conceptually. “We don’t fly a schedule,” says Iacobucci. “We’re looking at serving sparse demand that shifts from location to location, day by day, and hour by hour.”
Membership matters
Albeit that DayJet is not an excluding club, it is, nevertheless, membership driven. “We will have a pre-identified set of travellers,” says Iacobucci. “This is not ad hoc travel. In the early days we’re signing up companies – and individuals within the company.” Membership fees cover administrative costs and are set at $250 per annum. Iacobucci is aware that he must manage the parameters that will allow DayJet to deliver a consistent level of service. “If I signed up 20,000 people for 10 aeroplanes and customers were rejected 99% of the time, that wouldn’t be a very good experience. No one would be able to sign up to this service for business-critical travel,” he says.
The order for Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ) aircraft stands at 239 firm orders and options for an additional 70. Listening to Iacobucci speak, it becomes obvious why volumes are so high. “Ordering aircraft is a black art in a new market,” he says. “The people that we are targeting are not people that are identifiable as already flying fractional or charter today. We have done extensive modelling that convinced us of the proper level of aircraft for the projected demand in the centres we will open.” DayJet will join up sparsely distributed cities with travelling business communities away from the hubs who rely at present on highways. It is not unusual for such journeys to take two days by air because of connection time and lack of frequency in the schedule.
A leap of faith
But attracting members to a new club – the model for which has not existed previously – requires a leap of faith. Iacobucci is not squeamish about developing new markets. “There is an aspect of new markets that makes this work very exciting,” he says. “It is very easy to find win-win propositions and create new opportunities to partner with a lot of people. The downside is that you have to invest a proper amount of time in education and market development.” DayJet is asking the market to think differently; in the same way that the fractional companies followed a new train of thought in the 1990s. “We’re going to people today that don’t even know there’s a way to simplify their lives and cut their travel time in half. We’re offering them a value-added service. The overall cost of this service is not dissimilar to what it would cost them to drive and lose productivity over two days,” comments Iacobucci. The model at DayJet has been developed in a price-appropriate way for mid level managers of medium and small organisations from secondary markets. “We’re judiciously selecting the market in which we are going to launch. We’re going to have a presence in those markets – DayPorts – and we are direct marketing and educating the businesses that lie within 50 miles of each of these DayPorts as we open them,” remarks Iacobucci.
The nerve centre
Central to DayJet’s operation is a set of automated, integrated logistic systems developed by Iacobucci and his team, and verified by the scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. These are the backbone of the DayJet operation and they give the market the tools to take up DayJet’s offer of per-seat, on-demand, executive air travel. All these tools are integrated with DayJet’s real-time operations systems. “As people make reservations, we’re computing where our fleet is going on an hour by hour basis,” comments Iacobucci. “We follow flight plans rather than follow schedules.” Iacobucci describes the systems in place as heuristics that deal with problems that have no solution. As the business morphs and evolves, there must be checks in place to ensure that those changes do not invalidate any commitments made already.
IT enablement of the tangle of processes aside, DayJets also has available to it a fleet fit for the missions requested of it. “These are the two primary issues that we have had to deal with during our five years in business,” comments Iacobucci. He says that VLJs are a sufficient but not necessary condition for the market he is entering into; the Eclipse happens to be the first one that is being produced in quantity. “The important attributes of the vehicles that you choose to build this kind of system, our analysis has shown, is that it has to be a fleet of single type aeroplanes because this is a scale operation,” says Iacobucci. “Importantly, the Eclipse is the smallest of the VLJs – don’t forget that our customers would formerly have driven for two days in a car – so we can serve the needs of even one person who wishes to travel from A to B.”
The lower the break-even load factor of entry-level equipment, the better for this kind of model. As markets evolve, fleet requirements may change – but this will add complexity to the equation. Whatever happens in terms of fleet over time, one thing will not change: the need for precision avionics given the types of airfield DayJet will operate into. All aircraft will come home each night where high-utilisation fleet maintenance provision awaits them, again assisted by sophisticated data management so that heavy maintenance can be scheduled downstream. All line and light maintenance will be performed in DayBases while Eclipse will provide the A, B and C checks at its service centres. This means logistics integration with the manufacturer so Eclipse has insight into when heavy maintenance is due.
Out of the window
So if Iacobucci looks out of his window today, what can he see? “We haven’t launched yet but we have taken delivery of seven aircraft,” explains Iacobucci. “We have 10 pilots who are already type rated and four check airmen. We have our own FAA Part 135 training programme with our own training curriculum and organisation. Another 16 trainee pilots are going through the process.” It is important to remember that Iacobucci does have experience as an air carrier and continues to fly Learjet 60s and Challenger aircraft. “We are evolving our air operators certificate into a fully vertically integrated real time electronic certificate,” he comments.There is plenty on the agenda at DayJet. “Our first five DayPorts and two DayBases are just the start. We began in Florida but by the end of next year we should be well spread out into the southeast in about 30 locations,” he explains. “It is very exciting to get out of the world of simulation and into the world of dispatching aircraft. Ultimately, DayJet will roll out like a bolt of cloth.”
