Solano County travel agency offers tickets to final frontier

Residents of Solano County's oldest city could be blasting into the future with the help of a Benicia travel agency that is selling tickets on flights planned by a private spaceship builder.

Assuming they have the funds, that is, according to the Vallejo Times-Herald newspaper.

Bye Bye Birdees Travel Consulting is offering rides for flights on ships being constructed and tested by XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, one of several private companies building the space vehicles of the future.

XCOR operates from the Mojave Air and Space Port near Andrews Air Force Base in the California desert.

Assuming all goes as planned, XCOR could be offering flights by late 2013. Tickets cost $95,000 for a 35-minute flight, but a $20,000 deposit earns prospective space travelers four days of training -- including weightlessness -- at an Arizona resort, the newspaper said.

"It's going to be the wave of the future," Bye Bye Birdees owner Juliet Vercelli told the newspaper.

Vercelli's agency also does more-traditional travel planning such as destination weddings, romantic getaways and class reunions, the newspaper said.

"The most exciting thing to me is the idea of, in 10 or 20 years, being able to travel halfway around the world in one or two hours," Vercelli said.

Vercelli told the newspaper she signed up to represent XCOR in 2011 and went for sales training with the company last week.

Now, she's recruiting the first 100 passengers.

For more information, visit www.byebyebirdees.com or call (707) 313-3113.

Benicia was founded in 1847, three years before California became a state, and was the state capital in 1853 and 1854.