Entrepreneurship Grant Award

DayJet

Awarded: July 20, 2006

Location: Pensacola and Tallahassee
Target industry: Aerospace & Defense
Grant award: $100,000
Grant match: $5,000,000
Number of Jobs to be Created: 50

Business Summary:
DayJet offers a new vision of how regional business travel should operate – on the customer’s schedule, according to his needs, where he wants to go, when he wants to go – called Per-Seat, On-Demand business jet service. The company is building and operating the world’s first Per-Seat, On-Demand regional air service based on a new generation of Eclipse 500 very light jet (VLJ) aircraft and its own breakthrough real-time operations system. DayJet’s mission is to make on-demand regional travel widely accessible for more people and organizations by making what is now considered an elite mode of transportation broadly available and affordably priced at a modest premium to full-fare coach airfares.

Community airports served by DayJet, called DayPorts, will become more attractive locations for new or expanding businesses. DayJet itself will become one of those new businesses, basing aircraft and crews in the surrounding communities it serves and contracting with local suppliers for fuel and support services. These combined activities are expected to generate an average annual increase and economic impact of $25 million for each DayPort community – and this does not take into consideration the many economic development opportunities that should emerge once DayJet “comes to town.” Regionally, Tallahassee and Pensacola have been named as DayJet DayPorts.