Bermuda residents can now charter a jet to take them to anywhere on the East Coast, one-way.

The service is being provided by Longtail Aviation, a Bermuda company based in the large, blue-edged hangar left behind by NATO and visible from the St. David?s Road.

The new service is summarised as ?One way, any day, $10K?.

Earlier this week, Captain Martin Amick, Longtail?s head of flight operations, explained what that snappy phrase means. ?Longtail will fly customers one-way to or from the East Coast, on any day of the year, for $10,000, plus handling fees, landing fees and catering,? he said. ?The service is available at short notice, which can be as little as a few hours. On one occasion, just one hour elapsed from the phone call to wheels up, although that was unusual.?

The new service is based on demand from Longtail?s customers. ?This is what our customers have told us they want,? said Roger Brydon, Longtail?s chief operating officer, ?namely, a reliable, economically-priced service from Bermuda to the East Coast of the United States. This new service offers the maximum flexibility for one-way travellers.?

Mr. Brydon is probably more familiar to locals from his days as a Chief Inspector with the Bermuda Police Service.

?Normally, in on-demand charter, you have to price a round trip, because the airplane has to return to its base,? Capt. Amick said. ?Our service is priced on a one-way basis and is still reasonable. That?s the innovation.?

If Longtail?s two aircraft ? with a third on order ? must return to the hangar at Bermuda International Airport, how can the company afford to offer such a service at a price lower than traditional alternatives in the charter market?

?Because, in Bermuda we?re seeing a concentration of demand for one-way travel, and we are willing to operate this service, even if it initially results in a loss,? says Capt. Amick. ?Why? Let?s say we take a customer to New York City on a Monday. Well, maybe a day or two later, another customer calls and asks to be flown from New York, or, say, Washington, DC, to Bermuda. We have some positioning costs, and hotel expenses for the pilots, but that costs less than flying back empty would. We believe the demand is there to make this work.?

The customer base on which Longtail is taking a flyer is mostly business travellers, with some wealthy individuals also able to consider the cost a part of doing business, or of just living their lives. Longtail already services that market for round trips and other journeys with its two aircraft, a 12-seater Falcon 900 and a smaller six-seater Westwind II.

Longtail is offering its one-way service in the six-seater, but if circumstances demand, the larger plane will make the journey. Both can easily fly non-stop from Bermuda to any airport between Boston and Florida.

Longtail expects the bulk of demand for the new one-way option to be to and from the northern half of the Eastern Seaboard. ?We believe that this service will be a success, and that success will justify adding planes to the fleet or perhaps expanding it to include other destinations,? Capt. Amick said.

Longtail has flown to many Caribbean destinations, taking Bermuda residents with interests in the Caymans, Antigua, Bahamas and Barbados, to name a few examples, but demand for such trips is less frequent than is the case with the extended New York/Boston corridor.

?We?re also making Longtail Aviation a storehouse of information on available airlift to and from Bermuda,? Mr. Brydon said.

?We?re doing this with a combination of our airplanes and regularly collected information. The idea is that if people want to charter a plane for travel between Bermuda and the Eastern Seaboard, we want them to think of us.

?We may be able to look at our database and find another charter operator who has someone who needs to go one way, but would prefer to do so with us, at our more reasonable price.?

Longtail had made a number of pro bono medical flights, carrying ill people to medical facilities in the US, but when David Barber gave Bermuda a MedEvac aircraft for medical purposes, ?we decided that the best contribution we could make to the Island was to support that service, so that?s what we do,? Capt. Amick said. ?We provide them with hangar space and logistics support. We are also poised to back them up, should it ever become necessary.?

The company has also ferried supplies, emergency generators and other material following hurricanes here and in Cayman, at no charge.

Longtail employs six full-time pilots, one full-time and two part-time dispatchers, three full-time and one part-time mechanics, and Messrs. Brydon and Amick. Earlier in his career, Capt. Amick was a commercial pilot and subsequently became a lawyer. He keeps his pilot?s licence current, and often flies the Falcon.

The company has all manner of equipment that it can use to help other charter operators whose aircraft have pulled into Bermuda to fix a problem discovered en route to somewhere else.

Longtail Aviation operates a 24-hour call service on 293-6083 in Bermuda, and can be reached by e-mail at charterbermudaoneways.com. Its service requires no membership, prepaid travel cards or time restrictions. Pets are allowed.