Private jet charter has a weird blind spot: it produces a mountain of quotes, but very little truth about what actually booked.

Greg Johnson, President and CEO of Tuvoli, explains why this breaks decision-making across the entire ecosystem. If your systems only capture the quoting moment, you miss what matters most: who won, what price cleared, what equipment was selected, and what conditions made the deal move.

And here’s the kicker: as quote automation increases, the data gets worse, not better. Quote volume rises, feedback stays tiny, and the signal-to-noise ratio collapses.

Why “quote data” is not enough

Greg’s argument is that you cannot analyze charter performance properly if you do not know outcomes. Operators and brokers make huge assumptions like:

• “We’re losing because our prices are too high.”

• “We need a cheaper aircraft to compete.”

• “That marketplace is sending bad leads.”

But those conclusions can be wrong. Sometimes the lowest price did not win. Sometimes the client wanted a different aircraft category. Sometimes positioning or timing mattered more than rate.

Without closed-loop booking data, teams are guessing.

Payment truth is the missing link

Tuvoli’s wedge into this problem was not “better quoting” first. It was financial infrastructure. Greg calls this a gating item: a necessary foundation to improve charter sales flows.

Why? Because payment status is where reality shows up.

In the transcript, he describes all the messy edge cases that break manual tracking:

• A wire “sent” but posted under a slightly different name

• A short-paid wire because a fee was deducted

• A card charged even though a wire arrived

• Teams reconciling sales vs finance with Google Sheets

That spreadsheet gap is why the industry struggles to create reliable feedback loops.

Tuvoli positions itself as a system-of-record approach that connects the front end (the sale) to the back end (what actually happened).

What changes when you finally have outcomes

When you can see bookings, not just quotes, three high-impact things become possible:

1. Pricing decisions become evidence-based

   Instead of “we think we’re overpriced,” you can measure where you are competitive and where you are not.

2. Fleet strategy gets smarter

   Greg gives the example: you might think you need lower operating costs, but the market demand in your region could be skewing bigger. Without outcome data, you buy the wrong aircraft for the deals you actually lose.

3. Operator feedback becomes real

   If operators only see quote activity, they cannot learn effectively. If they see booked outcomes, they can refine equipment, positioning, and sales behavior.

The takeaway

Charter does not have a quote problem. It has a truth problem.

Greg’s message is that modern sales systems need closed-loop outcomes, and payment status is one of the fastest ways to anchor the system in reality.

Listen to the Greg’s interview here: https://flyironbird.com/private_jet_podcast/whats-broken-in-private-jet-charter

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