AirTaxiFlights: We, and just about everyone else in the media, have referred to DayJet as an air-taxi service.  I understand that's not how the home team sees it. 

Vicky Harris: We never call it an air-taxi service.  What we are is a per-seat, on-demand service between specific airports in a geographic region. 

ATF: Why will the first regions be Florida and the Southeast as opposed to other areas?

VH: Key factors in that decision were the results of two sophisticated agent-based, predictive marketing studies the Sante Fe Institute did for us.  They looked at really granular levels of geography - population, income, existing transportation networks, historic business-travel habits, flight and drive times - and ran simulated trips with the DayJet option to compare them to traditional trips.  We already had research that put the daily in-car pain threshold for business travelers at 200 to 250 miles and it turned out that 80 percent of the business travelers in the Southeast were driving 100 to 500 miles to get to appointments and back.  We viewed that as a prime market for DayJet's disruptive technology. 

ATF: What makes it particularly attractive?

VH: A lot of those 100 to 500 mile drives weren't being made to save money or because those travelers wouldn't rather fly.  They're being made because there's no other practical way to get between the places those people have to go.  For example, there are a lot of sales people with quotas on their heads who are losing an enormous amount of time stuck in their cars.  DayJet can relieve their pain and we believe their CEOs will find our service a better, more productive option for them. 

ATF: The Eclipse 500 is designed to carry four passengers and two pilots, but DayJet has ordered its fleet configured for three passengers.  Why is that?

VH: As part of our ongoing customer research, we conducted 121 focus groups with business travelers and corporate gatekeepers in late 2004.  We simulated various types of Fixed Base Operator scenarios and check-in procedures, and then had the subjects sit in an aircraft for 40 minutes.  It turned out the comfort level was higher with three seats - one on the left and two staggered on the right. 

ATF: Doesn't that cut down on the income potential of each flight?

VH: Not necessarily.  We want to turn our aircraft as fast as possible, so weight and its relation to fuel consumption becomes part of the equation.  Weight is actually one of the major variables our flight optimizer looks at.  If we have to refuel the aircraft more often because of excess weight it could eliminate a flight segment that day.