Right idea, but you have it backwards.

It was Texas Air Corp. that bought Continental, not the other way around. CO was on the ropes, and Texas Air had money. The rest is (very contentious and not entirely savory) history.

Which means, in essence, that the airline we now call "United" is the successor to Trans-Texas Airways.

This model seems very gym membership like.

And for every gym that is open, there are three that have gone bust.

Now that's funny! And likely very true!

It looks like they are up and running to some degree.
$500 Initiation Fee and $1,650 per month.

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_23447429/ne ... ost_viewed

$1650 is worth it if you use 1 round trip per month!

The $500 initiation fee is meant to cover 'background check' costs associated with pre-authorizing you to travel Part 121 without the TSA hassle.

I wish them all the best luck, it would be neat to expand and replicate the concept elsewhere in the country.

Requires multiple large cities in reasonable proximity to each other. Basically only other situation I can see it work is from Boston, NY, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and maybe Richmond.

Tim

It worked for Southwest..

What does a PC-12 cost per mile to fly? I agree that cheap & charter don't mix. Seems like the CEO just wanted to own a PC-12 and built a PFM (pure, f'n, magic) spreadsheet (I've built a number of these in my younger days too) to support the idea.

Seems like load factor doesn't matter if you have subscribers (until the point at which you have too many flyers)

Lots more money and regularity in packages than passengers. Packages don't care about pretty airplanes and nice terminals.

They had a short blip about this company on our local news last night, think yesterday was their first day making these flights.

I heard of a operation using a caravan out of olive branch ms daily flights to panama city gulf shores and back 250 each way

6 months from now the internet will be full of people complaining how they paid $10,400 and managed to get 3 flights out of it, none on a day that they actually wanted to fly and only after they showed up 8 times and got some excuse about maintenance, the weather, 'the pilot' not showing up etc.

Actually this should never happen, if Surf plays their cards right. They are absolutely aware of this problem and they have a very easy way to prevent it. They directly control the number of members and the waiting list. As long as there's high contention for seats they simply don't let new members sign up. In the near term, that means they're burning through their VC money.

Their hypothesis is that, like a gym membership, average usage per member will decrease over time, which means they will be able to allow more wait-listed people in while keeping bookings relatively flat. If the hypothesis proves true, eventually they can have enough members to turn a profit every month, yet their flights won't be overbooked.

As I said, for every Gym that is open, there are 3 that have closed and bankrupted the franchisee.

If you paid $75 and you can't get on a treadmill for 20min, you are going to be moderately peeved. If you paid $3800 and you can't get on a flight and miss a meeting, you are going to be 50.66 times as peeved.

As I said, for every Gym that is open, there are 3 that have closed and bankrupted the franchisee.

If you paid $75 and you can't get on a treadmill for 20min, you are going to be moderately peeved. If you paid $3800 and you can't get on a flight and miss a meeting, you are going to be 50.66 times as peeved.