Intermission or End?

Jet-sharing club Roam Maui has canceled all future flights—so the organization set forth in an email notice sent to the entirety of its members.

A semi-private, exclusive air-service catering specifically to Maui homeowners in five exclusive island communities, Roam Maui facilitates direct flights connecting Maui to Seattle, San Jose, and Los Angeles. The organization’s fleet comprises 44 Boeing 737-700 aircraft, each appointed with all-first-class two-by-two seating.

In keeping with the luxurious layout of its aircraft, Roam Maui offers inflight amenities the likes of chef-prepared meals, rotating wine lists, and craft cocktails. Members, who pay at least $136,000 for the privilege of traveling aboard Roam Maui aircraft, enplane and disembark via private terminals—e.g., Million Air, Atlantic Aviation, Clay Lacy Aviation.

Roam Maui flights are operated as charters under Department of Transportation Part 380 Exemption by Part 121 certificated air carriers exercising full operational control of the flights.

The aforementioned email read:

“This is a hard message to share with you, but also with sincere optimism for the future and long-term sustainability of Roam Maui. Effective immediately, we will be canceling our flight schedule for Roam Maui indefinitely to allow for a retooling of a model we are calling Roam Maui City Clubs.

“We recognize this will come as a significant inconvenience to all of you with flight plans on the schedule. We have explored and exhausted all options to not disrupt service. However, rather than patchwork fixes, we are taking the required and appropriate time to apply a full reset in order to optimize the model and relaunch with our best foot forward.”

By way of explanation, Roam Maui executives offered the following:

“How we got here:

“In honoring full transparency, we are happy to talk through with you in detail some of the headwinds we have experienced, as well as our go-forward modeling. We ask that you please set up a Calendly call with the partners should you wish to speak with us.

“In a nutshell, due to various factors, including a limited addressable market and marketing restrictions as defined by the Department of Transportation (DOT) and 737 aircraft costs, flying the 737 with an average capacity of under 14 people created profitability challenges as we made every attempt to reach our break-even targets of memberships sold. While the unfortunate events on Maui in August did not create these challenges, they expedited their exposure.

“For the time being, we amicably parted ways with Hillwood/Eastern (the 737 operator) and have made the decision to right-size the model for long-term sustainability with a fleet of private jets, where we do not cancel flights, and you can enjoy your Roam Maui membership (under a 2.0 plan) for many years to come.

“What is the go-forward plan?

“Our new model focuses on the member collective of each City Club of Los Angeles, Bay Area, and Seattle. A co-op-style program that will have the added benefit of monetizing empty seats for sale (largely during off-peak travel) to help buoy each City Club cooperative. Details are being worked out now with the partners, our investment group, and our board, and we hope to have something to present by next week.

“Moving from the 737 to private jets opens Roam Maui up to a great deal of new possibilities, including increased marketing TAM and the ability to freely market the program (no DOT restrictions), airport arrival /departure flexibility, the ability to sell available seats to underwrite each City Club cooperative.

“We value our amazing Roam Maui members, and while we take full ownership of what has transpired, we hope you can bear with us, and we simply ask for an unreasonable amount of patience as we develop and roll out Roam Maui 2.0.”

FMI: www.roam-maui.com