Why AI keeps missing the mark in jet charter – and what can be done to fix it

opinion

by Yves Le Marquand

January 16, 2026

Contributed content – author: Jeffrey Reis, founder and CEO of MyFlight Advisor.

As I have noted in previous articles, the industry has seen a spate of companies promising to “fix” jet charter. Most of it focuses on the same idea: instant pricing. Real-time availability. One-click booking. And almost all of it underestimates the same thing – the way this industry actually works. That’s not a knock on the technology. AI is powerful. But when it’s applied without understanding the structure of the market, it doesn’t simplify complexity – it collides with it.

The Problem Isn’t AI. It’s the Assumptions Behind It.

On paper, charter looks like an obvious candidate for automation. Flights have routes, aircraft have costs, schedules exist somewhere and pricing should be computable. In reality, charter is not a single market. I’ve covered this before, but it bears repeating: Charter is thousands of micro-businesses operating under wildly different constraints:

Operators with one or two aircraft
Managed aircraft that require owner approval
Leased aircraft with utilisation thresholds
Schedules that change faster than any system can publish them
Pricing that reflects risk tolerance, not just cost

Most AI platforms try to standardise the output without first standardising the conditions required for that output to exist. That’s why instant pricing keeps failing.

Why “Just Get Operators to Opt In” Doesn’t Work

A common belief in aviation tech is that if the product is good enough, operators will adopt it. That’s not how this market behaves. For many operators, participation means:

Additional operational burden
Less pricing discretion
Exposure without guaranteed upside
Technology costs that don’t scale with fleet size

When you’re running a small operation, survival beats innovation every time. So asking operators to voluntarily conform to a system that works against their natural incentives is a losing strategy.

The Real Question Isn’t “How Do We Price Instantly?”

The real question is, What would make it more painful not to participate than to participate? That’s the shift most platforms never make.

A Different Way to Think About AI in Charter

AI shouldn’t be used to force certainty where none exists. It should be used to identify structural friction, reduce coordination cost and normalise variability instead of pretending it’s noise. That changes what the system looks like.

Availability Is Probabilistic—So Model It That Way

Aircraft availability isn’t binary. It’s conditional. AI is well-suited to modelling likelihood:

Owner usage patterns
Maintenance disruption rates
Crew constraints
Historical dispatch reliability

Instead of claiming an aircraft is “available”, the system should express confidence. That’s how operators already think – AI just formalises it.

Pricing Should Be Banded, Not Fixed

Instant quotes fail because pricing is situational. A better approach would to create operator-defined pricing corridors using AI-generated ranges based on risk and utilisation, and then only escalating to humans when required. That preserves operator control while improving speed and transparency.

Small Operators Need Leverage, Not More Software

The industry won’t change unless small operators can participate without being forced to change their operating model that relies on fewer resources. Participation has to reduce quoting friction, filter low-quality demand and improve utilisation efficiency, all while working around the constraints that prevent them from providing instant pricing in the first place. When the system does work for them, opting out becomes expensive.

This Isn’t About Marketplaces—It’s About Infrastructure

The future isn’t another broker platform. It’s a shared operational layer. Once that layer exists, behaviour changes naturally. Buyers expect structured responses. Brokers expect confidence-weighted availability. Operators outside the system start losing relevance – not because they were forced out, but because the market moved on.

Yes, Some Will Leave. That’s Progress.

Every industry evolution creates pressure. Some operators will choose not to adapt. Some business models won’t survive transparency. Some inefficiencies will disappear. That’s not disruption – it’s maturation. In the end, AI won’t transform jet charter by pretending it’s an e-commerce problem. It will do it by respecting how the industry actually works – and then quietly removing the friction that keeps it stuck. That’s the work worth doing.