This month, a panel of experts will come to Fort Wayne to drum up public support for what organizers see as the future of aviation.  The basic idea is to create an alternative to traditional ground transportation and airline options by offering on-demand flights direct to regional destinations. Using light jets that can take off and land safely without the use of air traffic control towers or long runways, the airplanes would have access to various small airports.

Light jets are smaller and less expensive than traditional commercial jets. With cost-effective airplanes and access to about 5,000 small regional airports across the country, including 70 in Indiana, a new industry could flourish.

Companies offering on-demand, direct airline service to regional destinations at reasonable prices could prove an asset to economic development in communities not served by the hub-and-spoke system of traditional commercial airlines, said Bob Wearley, president of Indiana Strategic Air Transportation Services. Indiana SATS is an organization formed in 2004 to study the economic effect of the proposed system and to promote the new system in Indiana.

Several years ago, when NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration were in the research and development phase through the Small Aircraft Transportation System program, the reality of such a system seemed a long way off.

Today, the industry is moving past the research and development phase, however. More than a dozen manufacturing companies are starting to produce the new, extra-light jets and companies offering on-demand air taxi services are emerging around the country.

Wearley and his organization are working to make Indiana a leader in the new industry.

“Anybody who doesn’t think this is going to happen falls into the same category of the people who said there’d never be a man on the moon,” Wearley said.

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