I’ve had a lot of conversations recently about price transparency in private aviation.
One thing has become clearer to me through those conversations. I don’t think the industry needs to make every charter price transparent. I think it needs to make the transaction itself more transparent.
That is a very different problem.
Private aviation is difficult to price in a standardized way because every trip is different. The cost of a flight can depend on where the aircraft is located, where it needs to go next, crew availability, permits, airport restrictions, repositioning, timing, and a long list of operational considerations.
Two flights on the same route can look almost identical to a customer and still have very different costs for the operator.
That is why I don’t think the answer is putting one public price next to every route.
Operators are dealing with real operational costs and risks behind every flight.
An aircraft may already be positioned nearby, or it may need to fly several hours to pick up the passengers. A crew may already be available, or additional arrangements may be required. An airport may have restrictions that affect the operation.
All of these things can change the economics of a trip.
Operators need to be able to account for those variables when they build a quote. Taking that flexibility away would not necessarily make the market better.
The goal should not be to force every flight into the same pricing model.
There is also another part of this conversation that sometimes gets overlooked.
Brokers are not simply passing a price from one side to another. They are helping clients find the right aircraft, comparing different options, communicating with operators, negotiating when appropriate, and managing changes throughout the process.
A good broker adds value because private aviation is not a simple product.
Technology should make that process easier, not eliminate the role of the people who understand how to manage it.
The opportunity is to give brokers better information and better tools without taking away the relationships and expertise that make the market work.
This is where I think there is a much bigger opportunity.
A broker should be able to see what aircraft are actually available.
They should know when an operator has received a request.
They should be able to see whether an operator has quoted, declined, or simply has not responded.
They should have a clear view of what is included in a quote, what has been confirmed, where the trip stands, and what still needs to happen.
The customer should not have to wonder where their request is.
The broker should not have to search through five email threads to figure out what happened.
And the operator should not have to repeat the same information across different systems.
That information already exists. The problem is that it often lives in different places.
A private charter can involve inventory, availability, quoting, communication, contracts, payments, and operational updates.
Today, much of that still happens across email, WhatsApp, phone calls, PDFs, spreadsheets, CRMs, and separate quoting systems.
The information is there. What is missing is a better way to connect it.
That is where technology can make a real difference.
Instead of trying to make private aviation behave like a standardized airline product, we can build better infrastructure around the way private aviation actually works.
Connect the aircraft.
Connect the request.
Connect the quote.
Connect the communication.
Connect the confirmation and everything that happens after it.
That creates better visibility without telling operators how they should price their aircraft.
At Avitor, we are not trying to take pricing power away from operators or turn private aviation into a commodity.
We are trying to make the transaction around the flight work better.
Private aviation may never have one universal public price for every route, and I don’t think it needs to.
What it does need is better visibility into what is available, what has been requested, what has been quoted, and what happens next.
For me, that is a much more realistic opportunity.
Not one public price for every flight.
Better infrastructure around the transaction.