How FBOs Use Aviation Data To Solve Their Biggest Challenges

 A conversation with Signature Aviation & Jet Access on the problems FBOs face every day 

An FBO's business depends on knowing who is showing up before they land. Not just the tail number on the schedule, but the operator behind it, the account it rolls up to, and what that customer needs when the wheels touch down. Get that right and you staff, fuel, and price with confidence. Get it wrong and you're guessing, and the rival FBO down the ramp isn't.

The FBOs pulling ahead aren't the ones with the better location. They're the ones who knew who was coming and were ready first, and that comes down to having reliable aviation data for FBOs instead of guesswork. 

We talked to two FBOs, Signature Aviation and Jet Access, about what actually gets in the way of that. Signature runs nearly 230 locations worldwide. Jet Access has 10 locations and is building out its Dallas location alongside a mix of based and transient clients. Different scales but share the same key problems.

Here's what each one looks like, and where JETNET fits into their solutions.

Problem 1: Aircraft are Constantly Changing Ownership

Ownership and management data goes stale fast, and every FBO we talked to named it as their first challenge.

What FBOs face:

• Tail numbers move between operators, management companies, and owners, sometimes several times a year

• A single aircraft can be associated with multiple entities at once
• The wrong account or contact on file means the wrong pricing, the wrong communication, or a missed customer entirely
  
  

Angela Galeziowski, VP of CRM and Marketing at Signature Aviation, described it this way:

The JETNET fix - Aerodex

• Aircraft owner and operator database, with contact and owner details for every aircraft and 100% verification on new contacts
• Reflects the current operator, not the one on file from two owners ago
• Works the same way at every location, not just the ones with a dedicated researcher on staff
• Cuts down the manual research your team would otherwise do to confirm who actually owns the aircraft on your ramp

Dominique Chrabasz, Customer Service Manager, who works the FBO side of Jet Access's Dallas location, described the same gap from the ground:

Problem 2: Pricing Fuel Appropriately

Fuel is one of an FBO's biggest revenue levers, and one of the hardest to get right without current market data.

What FBOs face:

• Fuel margins move with the market, and so do competitor prices on the same field
  
• Price too high and traffic goes elsewhere. Price too low and margin disappears
• Without visibility into what other FBOs are charging, you're pricing blind
  

Angela mentioned this ties directly to pricing. Knowing who to contact before and after a visit is what lets her team apply the correct pricing or account requirements in the first place. 

The JETNET fix - WINGX

• Shows the TAM (Total Addressable Market) for fuel at your field

• Benchmarks your operation against the other FBOs competing for the same traffic
• Surfaces new opportunities, like under-served routes or high-yield traffic, before they show up on a competitor's radar
• Turns fuel pricing from a quarterly guess into an ongoing, market-backed decision

Problem 3: Knowing Exactly When Aircraft are Landing

Even with the right account on file, a good customer experience still depends on timing.

What FBOs face:

• Ground teams need real lead time to staff the ramp, stage fuel, and prep for a specific customer
• A vague or late signal turns a routine arrival into a scramble
• Service quality slips when the fuel truck isn't in position or the crew doesn't know the customer's preferences

The JETNET fix - ADS-B Exchange

•  Real-time aircraft position data with the fastest refresh rate in the industry at 250ms (when using gRPC) 
  
• Covers both in-air and grounded aircraft, so you have visibility before and after arrival
• Gives ground teams real lead time to stage before final approach, not after the aircraft has parked. A crew that knows an aircraft is 20 minutes out, not just "sometime today," can have the right person on the ramp when the door opens. 

Dominique's team relies on flight tracking. When a customer is scheduled to visit, knowing exactly when they'll land lets her loop in both her own staff and the customer's team ahead of time, so the experience feels seamless on arrival. 

Problem 4: Fierce Competition at Airfields

The first three problems all feed into this one. Get ownership, pricing, and timing right, and this is the problem that starts to solve itself.

What FBOs face:

• Most major airports have more than one FBO chasing the same transient traffic
• The operator that reaches out first and prices with confidence wins the business
• The one working off stale data doesn't, and that gap compounds over a year

Dominique described exactly this dynamic at Jet Access's Dallas location, where transient traffic is the majority of daily activity:

"We see people going to other airports all the time, and that's traffic we should be keeping. We want them coming here instead, and once they do, we want to know them well enough that they keep coming back."

The JETNET fix - The full ecosystem, together

• Aerodex, WINGX, and ADS-B Exchange combined cover who's coming, what to charge, and when to be ready.
• Angela's team described the value this way: JETNET "brings aviation-specific data into one place, helping us proactively understand which customers are connected to which aircraft, accounts, and operators."
• Dominique put the day-to-day version of that same value simply: "I like being able to find the actual operator and point of contact information instead of doing a Google search," where different listings for different operators leave you asking, in her words, "who's actually in charge of the aircraft that can make the decision."

Angela's team described the underlying value the same way: JETNET "brings aviation-specific data into one place, helping us proactively understand which customers are connected to which aircraft, accounts, and operators."

That combined view is what turns three separate lookups into one head start on the competition.

Why Good Data is Essential

See the full picture. Aircraft, operator, account, and arrival timing stop being four separate lookups and become one connected view. You know who's coming, who to contact, and what they need, before they land.

Scale with confidence. Whether you're running one FBO or a network of nearly 230 locations like Signature Aviation, decisions get harder to make as volume grows. Verified data means your team isn't second-guessing whether the account attached to an aircraft is still correct.

Save valuable time. Every manual lookup, every unanswered call to a contact who's no longer with the account, every fuel price set on a guess, costs time your team could spend on the customer in front of them. Angela noted that JETNET "helps reduce manual research" and "supports better pre-arrival planning, data accuracy, pricing alignment, and customer communication." That's time back for the team, not just cleaner data on a screen.

None of this works if the data lives somewhere your team doesn't. JETNET is available three ways:

• Configurable data feed and API for teams that want to build it into their own systems
• In-browser platform for teams that want a direct view
• Chat integrations through WhatsApp, Slack, and Claude, for a question and a structured answer without switching tools

Signature Aviation's team put it simply: "The most valuable feature is having aviation-specific aircraft and operator intelligence in one place... The platform and API capabilities also create opportunities for us to integrate aviation data more directly into our customer intelligence and operational workflows." Whether that's a dispatcher checking a browser between arrivals or an engineering team pulling data into an internal system through the API, the data can meet you there. 

Aircraft ownership will keep changing. Fuel pricing will keep moving. Airfields will keep getting more competitive. The FBOs that grow through it are the ones with verified data on every aircraft, operator, and contact, delivered fast enough to act on before the aircraft is already on the ground.