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In spite of efforts to cut costs, ambitious aviation startup DayJet says it has been forced to ground its planes and cease operations, one year after it took to the skies.
As late as mid-September, the Boca Raton operator of small, on-demand flights had hoped that a slimmed down operation — 100 of its 260 employees were dismissed in the spring — would allow the company to grow at a slower pace.
In a statement, DayJet blamed “the most serious capital crisis of our lifetime.” The company also cited difficulties with the manufacturer of the light jets it used, Eclipse Aviation. Eclipse failed “to install missing equipment” or perform agreed-upon repairs, DayJet says. The airline told customers with unused tickets to seek refunds from their credit card companies.
Privately held DayJet released its passenger traffic statistics with its closing announcement: 9,000 flight segments totaling more than a million miles, adding that it had “demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that customers will sign up, purchase and become frequent users of this new service.”
Launched in 2002 by Ed Iacobucci - the entrepreneur behind software giant Citrix Systems - as a revolutionary answer to airport delays and inefficient schedules, DayJet had hoped to grow this fall by capitalizing on airlines’ reduced flights to small markets and by boosting its marketing to corporate accounts.
Yet as summer 2007 ended, DayJet knew it faced an uphill climb. John Staten, DayJet’s CFO, told Florida Trend: “This is a change in the way people have been traveling for the past 30 years.”