Small Jets & The World Of Software

An absolutely fascinating article in this months’ Atlantic Monthly on how an air charter service actually considers itself to be a software company.

DayJet was formed by Ed Iacobucci, best known for Citrix. The article presents a fascinating look at how the mathematicians and computer scientists at DayJet predict demand for air charter services through complex simulations. The simulations aren’t geared towards making predictions on where people might want to travel from, but to expose patterns of travel that the company hopes to profit from.

So how does this work in practice? An excerpt from the article expresses it best:

On the Web site, you say where you’d like to go—to Naples, from Tallahassee—and when. Then comes the crucial part: specifying how flexible you are about your travel plans. If the flight itself takes just under two hours versus seven hours of driving (the site tells you how long the flight will take), and you have exactly two hours in which you’d like to travel, you say: “Can’t leave till 2 p.m., must arrive at 4 p.m.” After only a few seconds, the system gives you a quote, in this case DayJet’s highest rate: $1,296. But if you are free to travel any time that day as long as you get there by dinnertime, you enter: “Could leave as early as 11 a.m. but must arrive by 6 p.m.” In that case, the system comes back with a quote about one-quarter as high: $346. Airline fares for this route on Orbitz or Travelocity are usually higher, and the trip always takes longer, because there are no nonstops.

If you accept, the trip is booked—and the night before your trip, you get an e-mail specifying your exact departure time, meaning you won’t have to devote your entire “travel window” to traveling. If the e-mail says to get to the airport by 3 p.m., the plane will be there waiting for you. All you do at the airport is show your ID at a counter and walk onto the plane. If you have specified a wide-enough travel window to get a lower price, there may be at most one intermediate stop to drop off or pick up another passenger. Combining trips this way, in a familiar SuperShuttle model, is the key to DayJet’s per-seat, on-demand service, which keeps prices well below what they would be for chartering an entire plane.