Rebuilding the Financial Infrastructure of Charter Aviation: A Co-Founder’s Perspective

The private-aviation market is evolving faster than the infrastructure beneath it. Demand for charter flights continues to rise, while available aircraft remain limited. AllianceBernstein recently highlighted this imbalance in “Aircraft Financing: Sunny Skies and Constrained Supply,” noting that the global fleet is still nearly 3,000 aircraft short due to pandemic-era production cuts and that it may take a decade for supply to normalize.¹

In other words: demand is accelerating, supply is constrained, and the system beneath private aviation must operate with far more precision and agility than ever before.

Yet the financial rails powering the charter market still behave like it’s 2010. Wires, manual callbacks, banking hours, credit-card holds, spreadsheets, and after-the-fact reconciliation create friction in an industry where trip conditions, operators, fees, and logistics can change every hour.

As Co-Founder of Goodwin, I’ve come to see this not as a workflow problem, but as a systems problem. Aviation operates in real time. Aviation transacts in slow motion. That mismatch is now the biggest drag on the industry’s ability to scale.

The solution is not incremental tooling. It is new infrastructure.

Why Real-Time Infrastructure Is Now a Strategic Necessity

Charter aviation is a sophisticated orchestration of travelers, operators, crews, aircraft, weather windows, catering partners, and FBO logistics. One delayed payment confirmation can stall the entire system.

Traditional financial instruments simply do not match aviation’s operational tempo:

• Wires require manual verification and sit within banking hours.
• Credit-card holds introduce 3–4% fees and expose brokers to chargebacks.
• Reconciliation depends on people cross-referencing ledgers with emails.
• Operators often move on trust—because confirmation can’t arrive fast enough.

This is operational fragility built into the financial foundation. Goodwin was created to eliminate that fragility.

Our Observations From Inside the Industry

1. Aviation Runs 24/7—Funding Must Too

‍Charter decisions are often made late at night, over weekends, or during holidays. That’s when brokers are trying to lock aircraft, reposition crews, or confirm itineraries.
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But the banking system is offline. The current “solution” is trust, credit-card holds, or “we’ll reconcile Monday”—all of which introduce risk.
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Goodwin moves funds in real time, any time. No banking hours. No callbacks. No exposure. It’s aviation-native money movement designed for a 24/7 industry.

2. Trip Volatility Breaks Legacy Reconciliation

Every broker knows the pattern:

• Operator switches last minute
• Catering fees change
• Weather forces diversions
• AOG triggers an entirely new aircraft
• FBO invoices land days later
  

Each of these events creates reconciliation gaps. Brokers frequently tell us: “We have millions stuck in unaccounted buckets.” That’s because the financial layer isn’t connected to the operational state.

Goodwin ties funds directly to the trip object. When the trip changes, the financial mapping changes with it. Reconciliation becomes real time and event-driven—not a Monday-morning detective exercise.

3. Clients Expect Institutional-Grade Trust and Visibility

When a traveler sends tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, they want:

• Clarity
• Segregated funds
• FDIC-insured accounts
• Real-time balance visibility
• Transparent mapping of funds to specific flights
• Assurance that money is never commingled

This is not optional anymore. It’s a baseline expectation.

So we built client accounts as secure, segregated, auditable financial entities—with real-time visibility and programmatic tracking. Trust becomes a product feature built into the architecture.

The Next Era: Operational Data + Financial Data on One Rail

Over the last decade, charter aviation digitized quoting, scheduling, and CRM—but left payments and settlement behind. These systems must converge to unlock true scalability.

Goodwin Integrates:

• Operational events
• Financial events
• Settlement logic
• Reconciliation intelligence
• Real-time funds movement
• When these layers live on one rail, everything gets faster, clearer, and more predictable.
• Operators get certainty earlier.
• Brokers eliminate manual reconciliation.
• Clients get a modern, secure experience.
• Firms grow without adding administrative overhead.
• Revenue leakage shrinks.

The entire ecosystem moves in sync with real-world aviation conditions. This is the infrastructure shift the charter aviation market has been waiting for.

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Reference
¹ AllianceBernstein, “Aircraft Financing: Sunny Skies and Constrained Supply.” https://www.bernstein.com/our-insights/insights/2025/articles/aircraft-financing-sunny-skies-and-constrained-supply.html