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VLJs, Hangovers and Broken Dreams

We all hate hangovers. There is nothing pleasant about waking up from bad dreamless sleep to the intense regret that you begin to associate with sobriety.

But, in general and private aviation, metaphorically, we like TO DRINK. And we do it A LOT.

And that’s ok, so long as the booze keeps flowing, but the spigot is being shut off and lots of people aren’t as pretty as they once were. That little air taxi co.? Yeah, … not so cute in daylight. The manufacturer? Let’s not discuss the unspeakable acts they performed to get customers.

Dayjet’s recent collapse and Eclipse’s soon to follow path highlights just how far hubris and delusion can take you, your investor’s money and others into that big crater when you go on a bender.

Our cute little industry suffers from truly catastrophic failures. Richard pontificates on these tragedies years before they happen, which leads us to write posts like “The Joy of Being Right but Ignored.”

Here is the tragedy of human behavior: Most people prefer lies. They really do. Big stories and lies rock.

Slowly, incrementally building a small business? Eh… sounds like work… not so interesting.

False promises to investors, customers, and employees make it really hard for those that are actually building sustainable businesses in the same space. But enough dark talk… let’s do some good news:

This blog is dedicated to helping today while looking over the horizon to see how we can optimize for tomorrow.

First, we have a lot of clients who keep us fed, and many are in trouble now and we are in the business of ‘helping people’, so this is a very busy time for us as we help prospects and clients who are suddenly seeing the urgency for more and better revenue pipes. This blog is dedicated to tell the stories of successes and failures as we help folks navigate those waters.

Secondly, we’ve felt for a long time that the fundamental assumptions, attitudes and framework of general aviation, charter, air taxi etc. are simply broken and dysfunctional. Understand this is not something we say lightly: We are casting a sad characterization on the industry that is presently feeding us.

Dysfunctional means that there is no business, there are no profits and nothing scales easily in the present paradigm. The health of the entire space offers an insight into how the industry just has basic concepts all wrong: Fractionals, jet cards, etc. all in deep deep holes that they dug themselves into, while drinking heavily and refusing to put the shovel down.)

Since we are fairly nutty airplane people, our frustration led to our passion: Fixing stuff that flies.

We began developing a business, in our “lab” so to speak, a couple of years ago. The idea was to create an air taxi company that would work. After flying a lot of fictitious aircraft in computer simulation land, we burned enough fake Jet-A to see a simple and elegant way to make little airplanes very attractive and profitable.

So, in honor of the great collapses of 2008 and the bigger ones coming in 2009, we’ll take it out of the closet.

While Dayjet and Eclipse thought they had the right recipe, their founder’s lack of sincerity and commitment to their vision is obvious. Investors are fuming, customers are without deposits, and blame is being pointed anywhere but back to the most obvious - you weren’t prepared to make money out of the gate and you just thought the booze would keep flowing.

While the party continued, we built the Darwinian company that will, like Southwest, change the landscape.

We apologize for waiting until now, but the lies were too intoxicating and people simply didn’t want to listen. Now that is all about to change, so here she is. Download if you wish.

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