Flyte builds on-demand charter network around Cirrus Vision Jet

Flyte, a start-up based in New York City, is setting up an on-demand charter network built around the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, according to the company's founder and chief executive, Marc Sellouk.

The model echoes the very-light-jet air taxi wave of the mid-2000s, when a group of start-ups — Florida's DayJet among the most prominent — planned regional networks using types such as the Eclipse 500 and Cessna Mustang. Those aircraft cost less to operate than the larger jets normally used for charter, while offering more speed and capability than piston or turboprop aircraft. Manufacturers including Diamond and Piper also announced their own light-jet concepts.

Nearly all of those ventures have since disappeared. Of at least six VLJ launches, only the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet and the Embraer Phenom 100EX remain in production. Electric vertical take-off and landing designs and advanced air mobility projects have since taken over as the sector's most talked-about area.

The SF50 is the only certificated single-engine jet on the market, and it is more often associated with owner-flyers than with Part 135 charter operators.

Sellouk says Flyte will avoid the missteps that brought down highly leveraged predecessors such as DayJet, which collapsed shortly before it was due to begin carrying passengers. Rather than placing orders by the hundred, he intends to expand at a measured pace from the company's present fleet of five Vision Jets, which he describes as growth that is both prudent and profitable.

He rejects the idea that simply assembling a fleet guarantees demand for it.