Most charter sales don’t fail because of price.

They fail because the process makes customers give up.

In this episode of the Iron Bird Podcast, Dan Harris sits down with Greg Johnson, President and CEO of Tuvoli, to unpack one of the most broken parts of private aviation: how trips are sold, paid for, and tracked.

Greg has spent decades inside the industry, from running FBOs and charter brokerages to scaling sales systems and now rebuilding the financial and transactional layer of charter. This is a practical conversation about why quoting volume is exploding while data quality is collapsing, why operators are flying trips they thought were paid for, and why Excel is still quietly holding the industry together.

The discussion goes deep into where automation actually belongs, where AI helps today versus where it gets dangerous, and why improving customer experience is not a “nice to have” but a direct driver of close rates and margins.

This is not about flashy tech. It’s about fixing the workflows that determine whether a $40,000 flight actually closes or quietly dies in someone’s inbox.

✈️ Key Topics Covered

• Why charter checkout still feels harder than buying a house

• The hidden cost of multi-step quoting, PDFs, wires, and manual follow-ups

• Why most operators have no visibility into which quotes actually convert

• How poor payment tracking creates risk between sales and accounting

• Why “lowest price wins” is often a myth without real booking data

• The difference between automation and AI in aviation workflows

• Where AI already adds value today without touching safety decisions

• Why revenue management, not hourly rate, is the real lever operators ignore

• How friction pushes customers toward jet cards and fractionals

• Why charter software has historically been compliance-first, not sales-first

🔍 Why This Episode Matters

Private aviation doesn’t have a technology shortage.

It has a transaction problem.

Greg explains why:

• Manual quoting at scale is already a liability

• Payment ambiguity creates financial and reputational risk

• Sales systems fail when they are not system-of-record

• AI works best when it removes repetitive effort, not human judgment

• Friction, not price, is what pushes customers to more expensive products

If you manage aircraft, oversee charter sales, or make decisions about tech adoption, this episode gives you a grounded framework for what to fix first and what not to automate blindly.

🎧 Listen to the Episode

Catch the full conversation on the Iron Bird Podcast and hear how charter sales, payments, and pricing are being rebuilt from the inside out

🤝 Episode Sponsors

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