Eclipse & Santa Fe Institute

In the current (May) issue of The Atlantic, national correspondent James Fallows revisits the tale of small, relatively inexpensive jet aircraft revolutionizing air travel. As with his report of seven years ago, Fallows says lots of nice things about Eclipse Aviation of Albuquerque, which announced its move here in 2000. However, the story is through the window of DayJet Corporation of Boca Raton, Florida. DayJet calls itself "the world's first per-seat on-demand jet service, an entirely new approach to regional business mobility."

The trick, though, is to define "region" and have an idea when and where people might go. Economically, it wouldn't work to go quite "anywhere" at quite "any time," at least not without substantial price adjustment for more obscure places and times. Here another New Mexico element, very sophisticated data analysis, enters the picture. Before joining DayJet five years ago, Jim Herriott and Bruce Sawhill spent five years associated with the Santa Fe Institute, the non-linear dynamics research outfit that is more the center of many networks instead of a contained place. Using "agent-based modeling," Herriott and Sawhill simulated the decisions made by the 500,000 people each day who go on business trips of 100 miles or more in DayJet's initial region of seven southeastern states. 

So far, so good. DayJet has been flying since September 2007.

For the Santa Fe Institute, see www.santafe.edu. For the story, see www.theatlantic.com.