Tonight I attended the official launch of the DayJet (http://www.dayjet.com/), on demand, point to point air service to under-utilized airports around the state of Florida (initially)... This was held in the Avitat hanger (a fairly new Fixed Base Operator) overlooking the Boca Raton Airport Field.
Besides knowing some people who work there, I was looking forward to seeing an Eclipse 500 VLJ - Very Light Jet(http://www.eclipseaviation.com/), the first of a new generation of low cost jet aircraft. I did get to sit in one, a two pilot, three passenger plane. Not large but meant to be low cost, fast transportation. DayJet has taken delivery of 12 jets with another few hundred on order. Eclipse was founded by Vern Raburn, former, early Microsoftie.
As Ed Iacobucci, DayJet (and Citrix) founder pointed out. DayJet is the first company to get a fully digital certificate from the FAA. The entire process from customer negotiation/booking through to automatic generation and filing of flight plans to the FAA is a first. Most airlines have hundreds of people doing this work, DayJet has zero. They hired a group brains from Georgia Tech to come up with the algorithms for the underlying engines then built all the automated business software on top of that.
While he was talking about how quiet the Eclipse is given the somewhat rocky history of the Boca Airport and it's relationsship with the surrounding neighborhoods (curved approach path and all).. a DayJet Eclipse took off, made some noise but not bad, he did not have to stop talking. A few minutes later a larger business jet (a Falcon??) followed by a smaller (than the Falcon) took off, both made a LOT more noise so that Ed had to stop speaking.
A point of history on the Boca Airport... it was a very large complex during WWI where both air and ground crews trained on the then secret and evovling RADAR systems developed in England and then at MIT. Sally J Ling wrote an interesting book on the subject "Small Town, Big Secrets". Much of the former airfield is now occupied by Florida Atlantic University with the Boca Raton airport retaining one of the airstrips.