We joined the panel "Digital Transformation in Business Aviation: Where Do We Stand?" at the Elite Wings Aviation Summit in Montreal on June 16, days after the CBAA Innovation Stage in Calgary. Shaan Bhanji of Fast Air moderated, alongside Jean De Looz, COO of MySky. One operator, one software platform, and us in the fractional-CTO seat. A good room to argue this in. Here is where we said the industry actually stands.
Most operators cannot name their own software
We ran a quick poll with the room: how many software applications does it take to run your operation? The estimates landed around 30, which is the same number nearly every operator gives us. In every full audit we have run, the real count has come back over 100. And 10 to 15 percent of that is redundant, the same job paid for twice, which is cost you can take out the week you find it.
The first problem in "digital transformation" is not buying more. It is that almost nobody has actually counted what they already run.
The spend gap is real, and nobody is measuring it
Business aviation spends, on average, 3 to 4 percent of revenue on technology. In the enterprise world we came from, companies that want to sit on the leading edge put 12 to 15 percent into it. That gap is the story.
And there is no published benchmark for business aviation IT. If you try to look up where you should sit on tech spend, on quote-to-book time, on the size of your stack, there is nothing out there. That missing benchmark is a gap we are actively filling, because you cannot manage what you cannot compare.
Build or buy: it depends, and now it is finally a real question
For thirty years the answer was always rent, because building was a rich company's game and the market was too small for anyone to build for it. That changed. But "build everything" is the wrong lesson to take from it. The honest answer is that it depends on your stage, your scale, and where your pain actually is.
Rent when the vendor brings something you cannot easily replicate: proprietary data built up over years, or complex integrations they maintain so you do not have to, like payments or security-sensitive workflows. A vendor that keeps evolving the product earns its rent. A subscription that does the same thing five years from now does not.
Build when the software is simple, expensive, and hands you no unique data or integration in return, and especially when it touches the part of your operation that makes you different. The cost of building software that fits you exactly has dropped 10 to 100 times. The scarce ingredient was never the code. It was the domain knowledge you already own.
Own your data
One thing the whole panel agreed on: read your data clauses. Most SaaS contracts grant the vendor a perpetual, unlimited license to your data. On one vendor RFP we ran for an operator, the incumbent wanted ten thousand dollars just to hand back the operator's own data. Your flight history and your customer list should be yours. Check the contract before you sign it, not at renewal.
The proof is already in operations
If a room is skeptical about AI in safety-critical work, the answer is not enthusiasm. It is a regulator's signature. We produced a Minimum Equipment List, primarily AI-written, that Transport Canada approved. We authored another for a hydrogen-powered aircraft, a brand-new airframe with no precedent to copy from.
On the everyday end, we built a crew-records system that runs for a couple of dollars a month and gave a chief pilot back the forty-plus days a year he had been spending typing records by hand. A small sliver of AI to read each document and file it, with the rest plain automation. Very unglamorous, very high return. The question is no longer whether AI can be trusted with serious aviation work.
What it actually takes
None of this requires becoming a software company. It requires one capable technical person who can steer the build and own it, pointed at the workflow that wastes the most hours or fits you worst. The budget constraint that defined the last thirty years moved. The talent constraint, one good steerer next to the domain expert, is what is left. That is a much better problem to have.
Thanks to Shaan Bhanji of Fast Air for moderating, to Jean De Looz of MySky for a genuinely sharp exchange on build versus buy, and to the Elite Wings team for putting it together.
If you run an aviation operation and you want to walk your application portfolio with someone who has done it, that is the conversation we like having.
Benjamin Thomas
ForIT Team
