I’ve written before about how excited I have become about the new shared helicopter service from Manhattan to JFK and Newark. This weekend was my first chance to actually book a flight as I am in New York.

Gotham Air needs a minimum number of passengers before it operates a service, and even though a couple of other people had booked on my flight, by Friday there didn’t look to be enough people for my service to actually operate.

And so it proved when I received this email this morning:

We have been watching the flight that you booked for travel on 4/19/2015 from Downtown Manhattan. Unfortunately, your flight does not have the minimum number of passengers to fly. We have been confirming flights every day, but unfortunately, yours did not get confirmed. We appreciate the fact that you used our service during our beta period. 

We are disappointed to tell you that we will be refunding your credit card. We hope that you will consider trying our service again, as we ramp up our service from our beta period to our full launch. As such, we would like to offer you a $25 promo code good for any time this year. 

The next time you book, we would encourage you, if possible,  to book ahead with at least 30 days advance warning. This gives your flight the best possible chance of being crowd sourced. We hope to see you on a Gotham Air flight soon

And so it looks like UBER will get another trip to the airport with me tomorrow.