Story ID: 
All-you-can-fly Club Beacon Comes Crashing Down
By: Chad Trautvetter
Caption: After starting service last summer, Beacon ceased operations at the end of January.
Word Count: 226
Surf Air co-founder and former CEO Wade Eyerly’s experiment to start a similar all-you-can fly member airline, dubbed Beacon, in the Northeast has ended in failure. After starting service last summer, Beacon ceased operations at the end of January, company co-founder and now-former CFO Cory Cozzens told attendees at the recent NBAA aircraft registration, finance and legal conference in Boca Raton, Fla.

Like Surf Air, the company charged a monthly fee (starting at $1,750) to provide members unlimited access to flights. However, Beacon had offered scheduled flights on a mixed fleet of PC-12s and King Air 350s only between New York and Boston, a route that business aviation consultant Rollie Vincent said is already well saturated by low-cost, high-speed train and airline service. Beacon’s plans to add flights to the Hamptons and Nantucket on weekends never materialized.

Boston-based Romulus Capital led the first round of fundraising for Beacon last year. It is unknown how much capital it raised and if the lack of funding led to Beacon’s demise. AIN was unable to reach Eyerly, Cozzens or the company’s third co-founder, Reed Farnsworth, for further comment.

In an interview conducted late last year, Eyerly told AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler that he planned to launch additional regional subscription services “as fast as we can.”