DayJet founder Ed Iacobucci remains bullish on the per-seat air taxi model his company pioneered and he says he’s looking for $5 million to get started again in a limited way. Iacobucci told the South Florida Business Journal he would operate the revived version of DayJet with about 10 aircraft and envisioned a service similar to the one he shut down a month ago, laying off the staff and returning 28 aircraft to Eclipse Aviation. He continues to blame the demise of the first incarnation of DayJet on the lack of available capital. A restart will also depend on independent financing, with Iacobucci noting that after putting $20 million of his own money into the company, “my liquidity is severely taxed.” Plan B is bankruptcy and he said a “wind-down team” is in place if it comes to that.
Iacobucci has also blamed shortcomings of Eclipse for some of the company’s problems but he said the lack of money to expand the service at the rate required to serve its debt was the main problem. “It boils back down to capital,” he said. Iacobucci said the company had loyal customers, just not enough of them. “Our No. 1 problem we recognized was education [of potential customers],” he said. “Perhaps, if there was one thing we did wrong, it was targeting a large-scale model too quickly.”
