If you’ve ever asked, “Are we spending the right amount to operate this aircraft?” you’re not alone. In Dan Harris’ Iron Bird Podcast interview with Jean De Looz, COO of MySky, the big idea is simple: most aircraft owners and operators aren’t missing effort. They’re missing repeatability and a single source of truth.

MySky’s origin story starts in Switzerland, where the company began as a secondary audit partner for family offices. Owners had KPIs for everything in their businesses, but not for the aircraft itself. So the question wasn’t just “What did we spend?” It was, “What did we spend, why did we spend it, and did it match what actually happened operationally?”

The real problem: finance data and ops data don’t talk

Jean describes an industry reality: you typically have accounting/finance data on one side and operational data (pre-flight, post-flight, scheduling, flight history) on the other. They live in different systems, owned by different people, with different formats. So reconciliation becomes “people power.” Someone has to look at a receipt, cross-check tail/date/leg, match it to the trip, code it, and then later try to pull insight from it.

That manual approach breaks fast. In the episode, Jean shares the scale of the paperwork: a single aircraft can generate roughly 120–180 documents per month, and without automation many operators effectively need one accounting FTE for every 4–5 aircraft just to keep up.

Why “just hire more people” is a trap

Here’s what happens in real life:

• You add aircraft, so you add accounting headcount.

• Then HR/admin load grows.

• Then your costs expand in layers, even if your revenue didn’t expand cleanly.

Jean’s point is that scalability is the pain point. At small fleet sizes, manual workflows can survive. Beyond that, they choke margins and slow decisions.

Where money leaks: the places operators don’t see clearly

The interview highlights recurring “surprise” categories that often get underestimated:

• Fuel and its pricing opacity (especially in the U.S. market)

• Handling and navigation-related charges (often more painful in Europe)

• Maintenance, which is always the big one for owners

• Agent fees, including “agent-to-agent” outsourcing that becomes inefficient over time

Those aren’t guesses. They’re exactly the categories that become hard to manage when you can’t tie a line item to the operational event that created it.

Why traditional ERP accounting struggles in aviation

Jean isn’t anti-ERP. He’s saying ERPs are designed for enterprise accounting, not aviation-specific granularity. Aviation needs a layer that can validate costs against operational reality and then feed the ERP in the structure the business needs. In the episode, he describes an “accounting queue” concept that converts and preps data like a Rosetta stone between aviation operations and finance.

The brand risk nobody talks about

One of the most underrated moments in the conversation: operational finance errors can become a trust and security issue, not just a bookkeeping issue. Jean gives an example of invoices that included unredacted information from other tail numbers, which can expose confidential data and even movement-related details. The takeaway is blunt: sloppy finance ops can damage brand credibility.

The fix is not “more tech.” It’s better process.

Jean’s key insight is repeated on the episode page itself: technology alone does not fix aviation operations. Process is king.

Implementation success needs:

• A champion/project lead

• Openness to change (even when people are rigid by habit)

• Realistic time expectations (MySky “spend” can be ~90 days to get going, with proficiency improving over months)

Why this matters more in Part 91 vs Part 135 environments

The episode talks about differences between Europe and the U.S. and references both Part 91 and Part 135 operator realities. If you’re operating Part 135 charter, the FAA treats it as on-demand, unscheduled air service with a higher regulatory and oversight burden than typical private flying.

That makes clean records, repeatable workflows, and accurate reporting even more mission-critical.

Bottom line: The “true cost” of operating an aircraft isn’t just the invoice total. It’s the cost of delay, error, manual labor, and mismatched incentives. The operators who win aren’t the ones doing more. They’re the ones building workflows where the same input produces the same output, every time.

Listen to the full episode: MySky: Understanding True Costs of Operating Aircraft

https://flyironbird.com/private_jet_podcast/mysky-understanding-true-costs-of-operating-aircraft

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