Philten,
While you are certainly a pilot and well meaning, you might be missing the point with specific aircraft that are ready for air taxi today that have been around for years. The Cessna Caravan and Pilatus PC-12 are examples of aircraft that are perfect for the 500 mile segment market and have DOC's that are low enough (that with 8 pax) you can actually make flying very affordable. In fact, in many parts of the world, the aircraft offer cheap air taxi solutions for the layperson where there is no alternative. To make it clear, let me do some quick math. An operator of a highly utilized Caravan needs $600/hr to make money. That is $100 / hr per pax (assming 6 pax load - it can take 8) one way, to cover 150 nautical miles.. or 66 cents per mile. That is a turbine all weather aircraft that is unpressurized. It can fly in icing conditions but not above the weather, as you point out. The PC12 or King Air, however, can.. and in the PC-12's case it is not a lot more money per hour that his needed to make the #'s work. The PC12 is also fast, about 250 kts per hour instead of 160 kts like the Caravan. So.. while you may be down on the practicalities of truly light GA aircraft, don't forget the plethora of larger turboprops that are waiting to go to work, with low DOC's, pressurization in some cases, and certainly the ability to operate in all weather.
Actually, you raise a couple of good points in this post that deserve clarification:
#1 Security screening for on demand charter ops is actually very light, and will probably stay that way. There is name checking for sure, but no toothpaste confiscation or gratuitous fondling. It will probably stay this way for quite some time due to the shear impracticalities of this.
#2 DOC's (Direct Operating Costs) for the aircraft you mention highlights a key shortcoming within the industry that effectively prevents normal people from accessing the business. A commercial aircraft, by definition, is one that makes money when it flies. Anything that costs $5 - $10 mile with such a small load cannot work, at least for cost driven peole - i.e. the rest of us. But, you might argue, the problem is that no one has ever asked a corporate jet to perform like a commercial aircraft. (Except perhaps the Challenger 600 series that begat the CRJ line, which has its own story.) To give you an idea on how messed up "the culture" of biz aviation is and why your DOC's are so high, compare the cost of a new windscreen on a Lear 60 vs. a Boeing 737. Hint: the Lear 60 part (same part almost) is about 10 times more expensive - why? Because the idiots that buy Lear 60's tend not to be price sensitive,.. i.e. like the rest of us. Hopefully Eclipse will fix that problem, but don't count on it.
#3 Eclipse is a manufacturer, not service developer. They want to sell more units by "hoping" that air taxi takes off, but some don't think it can / will under present cultural paradigm. When thinking about Air Charter for the Unwashed Masses you really have to look at companies like Southwest to see how they made it. They looked (in 1971) at a broken model / pricing structure and asked themselves how to quadruple the market size. Once they figured out their "best" price on a cost plus basis, they offered something that revolutionized scheduled air. Air taxi folks really don't think this way yet. DayJet might, but they also may have picked the wrong aircraft.
The key to the whole question of developing "Everyone's Air Taxi" is to tackle the utilization problem. If the aircraft (any aircraft, older or newer) flew 2000 hours per year instead of 800, then the prices (let's say on simple turboprops flying 500 miles or less) would be affordable for a larger swath of people. But for now, it will remain in the leagues of the stratosphere where people burn $10,000 a day for fun.
In order for air taxi to work, business owners need to think backwards from what they can sell (to the masses) and then get the utilization / cost structure on the aircraft to match it through proper planning. No one, to date, in air taxi has really attempted this. Great passion and ideas, but poor planning and execution.
Slashdot Mirror
Philten, While you are certainly a pilot and well meaning, you might be missing the point with specific aircraft that are ready for air taxi today that have been around for years. The Cessna Caravan and Pilatus PC-12 are examples of aircraft that are perfect for the 500 mile segment market and have DOC's that are low enough (that with 8 pax) you can actually make flying very affordable. In fact, in many parts of the world, the aircraft offer cheap air taxi solutions for the layperson where there is no alternative. To make it clear, let me do some quick math. An operator of a highly utilized Caravan needs $600 /hr to make money. That is $100 / hr per pax (assming 6 pax load - it can take 8) one way, to cover 150 nautical miles.. or 66 cents per mile. That is a turbine all weather aircraft that is unpressurized. It can fly in icing conditions but not above the weather, as you point out. The PC12 or King Air, however, can.. and in the PC-12's case it is not a lot more money per hour that his needed to make the #'s work. The PC12 is also fast, about 250 kts per hour instead of 160 kts like the Caravan. So.. while you may be down on the practicalities of truly light GA aircraft, don't forget the plethora of larger turboprops that are waiting to go to work, with low DOC's, pressurization in some cases, and certainly the ability to operate in all weather.
Actually, you raise a couple of good points in this post that deserve clarification:
.. i.e. like the rest of us. Hopefully Eclipse will fix that problem, but don't count on it.
#1 Security screening for on demand charter ops is actually very light, and will probably stay that way. There is name checking for sure, but no toothpaste confiscation or gratuitous fondling. It will probably stay this way for quite some time due to the shear impracticalities of this.
#2 DOC's (Direct Operating Costs) for the aircraft you mention highlights a key shortcoming within the industry that effectively prevents normal people from accessing the business. A commercial aircraft, by definition, is one that makes money when it flies. Anything that costs $5 - $10 mile with such a small load cannot work, at least for cost driven peole - i.e. the rest of us. But, you might argue, the problem is that no one has ever asked a corporate jet to perform like a commercial aircraft. (Except perhaps the Challenger 600 series that begat the CRJ line, which has its own story.) To give you an idea on how messed up "the culture" of biz aviation is and why your DOC's are so high, compare the cost of a new windscreen on a Lear 60 vs. a Boeing 737. Hint: the Lear 60 part (same part almost) is about 10 times more expensive - why? Because the idiots that buy Lear 60's tend not to be price sensitive,
#3 Eclipse is a manufacturer, not service developer. They want to sell more units by "hoping" that air taxi takes off, but some don't think it can / will under present cultural paradigm. When thinking about Air Charter for the Unwashed Masses you really have to look at companies like Southwest to see how they made it. They looked (in 1971) at a broken model / pricing structure and asked themselves how to quadruple the market size. Once they figured out their "best" price on a cost plus basis, they offered something that revolutionized scheduled air. Air taxi folks really don't think this way yet. DayJet might, but they also may have picked the wrong aircraft.
The key to the whole question of developing "Everyone's Air Taxi" is to tackle the utilization problem. If the aircraft (any aircraft, older or newer) flew 2000 hours per year instead of 800, then the prices (let's say on simple turboprops flying 500 miles or less) would be affordable for a larger swath of people. But for now, it will remain in the leagues of the stratosphere where people burn $10,000 a day for fun.
In order for air taxi to work, business owners need to think backwards from what they can sell (to the masses) and then get the utilization / cost structure on the aircraft to match it through proper planning. No one, to date, in air taxi has really attempted this. Great passion and ideas, but poor planning and execution.