Fed Up ??? Call the "Air Taxi"

With airlines cutting back on flights and losing money by the billions, it may not seem like the right time to be starting one. But a former dot-com entrepreneur believes some traffic-weary Southern Californians are ready for a new way to get around.

A novel air service, starting with just four propeller planes, will begin later next month shuttling passengers between dozens of airports, stretching from Oxnard to San Diego, in what it calls "ultra-short-haul" service.

Harking back to the early days of aviation when pilots in biplanes picked up passengers on farm fields, the flights on Miwok Airways are not scheduled. They fly on demand and can take off from any of the more than three dozen airstrips in the region.

Passengers can set their own flight time and then be flown in four-seat Cirrus propeller planes with fares as low as $82 one way. The fare will depend on the distance between airports and on how many people are sharing the plane, rising to more than $300 if no other passengers are on the plane. The plane can seat three paying passengers.

By comparison, chartering a plane can cost more than $600 an hour.