For decades, charter quoting has been treated as a manual craft. Emails arrive. Sales teams copy details into systems. Pricing is built line by line. Availability is checked across departments.

Paolo Sommariva believes that model is no longer viable.

Why Manual Quoting Breaks at Scale

In the interview, Sommariva describes operators receiving dozens, sometimes hundreds, of inbound requests per day. Many go unanswered, not because demand is weak, but because teams cannot keep up.

The problem is not too many requests.

It is too much manual labor.

Reading emails, extracting airport codes, checking crew duty limits, and validating maintenance status are not high-value sales activities. They are mechanical tasks that technology can handle faster and more consistently.

Automation Changes the Math

When quoting is automated, operators can respond to significantly more requests without increasing staff. Even if booking ratios remain modest, volume drives revenue.

Sommariva emphasizes that perfection is not the goal. Automated pricing does not need to be flawless on every quote. It needs to be accurate enough, fast enough, and scalable enough to support the business as a whole.

Over time, margin is protected not by perfect individual quotes, but by consistent execution across the year.

Availability Is the Hidden Constraint

Automated quoting only works if availability data is accurate.

Sommariva highlights how many booking failures occur because aircraft were never truly available in the first place. Maintenance overruns, crew duty conflicts, or airport restrictions surface only after a quote is accepted.

Modern platforms evaluate dozens of parameters automatically before issuing a price. Insurance, crew legality, runway limits, airport hours, owner restrictions, and maintenance status are checked in seconds.

This is where automation stops being a sales tool and becomes an operational safeguard.

The Future Is Instant Pricing

Sommariva predicts that for lower-value charter flights, instant pricing will become standard. Clients will expect immediate answers, just as they do in commercial travel.

Brokers and operators who add value through judgment, service recovery, and complex missions will continue to matter. But speed and reliability will define the baseline.

Automated quoting is not about replacing people.

It is about keeping up with reality.

Listen to the full episode: What’s Really Happening in AI and Aviation

https://flyironbird.com/private_jet_podcast/whats-really-happening-in-ai-and-aviation

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