PSOD has little appeal for charter operators who want to serve traditional markets. Magellan Jets is a newly formed company that has a unique business proposition: “Simplicity,” says president and co-owner Anthony P. Tivnan. Aimed at the higher end clientele, the service provides aircraft seven years old or newer in a range of sizes to fit the trip, which includes everything and has no addition fees or invoices. All costs are deducted from an account with $250,000 on deposit.

“The per-seat model is the wrong place, wrong time,” he says. “We’re not positioning ourselves to target fliers who travel one to three times a year. The 30-percent decline in charter has been mostly those people.” He’s also not drawn to passenger aggregation schemes. “Our customer wants the airplane,” he says. Magellan customers are primarily looking for privacy.

It’s not clear how many of those ADS-B-equipped planes are actually flying these days. DayJet Corp., whose fleet of air taxis was to have been a testbed for NextGen technology, including ADS-B, has stopped flying as of Sept. 19. This story from the Birmingham Business Journal has the company blaming its woes on money and aircraft problems. Read more about the original DayJet-FAA MOU in this Google cache of a company press release (pdf) from June 2008.