What does every tail and trip have to earn?
Send the flight, maintenance, and financial records you already keep. We connect them to show tail breakeven, trip economics, and price floors by lane and direction, with every figure traceable to its source. Then the record stays current after every monthly close.
Sample operator. Fictional fleet, network, and figures.
- N221XQ, ABQ to ROW, departs 06:05, +402 h
- N225XQ, ABQ to FMN, departs 06:10, +295 h
- N256XQ, ABQ to GUP, departs 06:15, 105 h short
- N230XQ, ABQ to HOB, departs 06:20, +76 h
- N262XQ, ABQ to SVC, departs 06:25, 171 h short
- N241XQ, ABQ to SAF, departs 06:30, +159 h
- N278XQ, ABQ to CNM, departs 06:40, 215 h short
Overview
What the operator earns after every cost, and where the next dollar is.
Sample data. A fictional seven aircraft operator.
$295K earned after full cost on $8.52M of flight revenue.
Four of seven tails clear their fully loaded breakeven; N256XQ, N262XQ and N278XQ do not.
Where the value is
Economics
What every tail and trip has to earn.
Sample data. A fictional seven aircraft operator.
Breakeven is the block hours a tail must fly for its contribution to cover its full share of fixed cost. The mark on each bar is that point.
One rotation in a slow week, ABQ to HOB and back.
The leg home flies anyway. Freight added here costs about $0.11 a pound.
$1,710 short of fully loaded, and $145 short of its trip floor.
Trip floor is what flying the rotation adds in cost, including the leg home: fuel, maintenance and engine reserves by the hour, crew duty pay, and landing and handling fees. Fully loaded adds the rotation's share of fixed cost at the fleet rate of $559 a block hour.
What a pound must earn on the sample lane, by direction, against what it earns today.
The report gives every lane the same two rows. The floor covers the trip floor and the hurdle covers fully loaded cost, holding the return at today's revenue. A return pound never costs less than $0.11, the handling and the fuel for the weight.
From revenue to full cost
Contribution is revenue less cost to fly: fuel, maintenance, crew duty pay, landing and handling, and engine reserves. Everything else is fixed cost.
Evidence
79% of cost is recorded at the tail. Nothing is reconciled until the monthly close signs it off.
Cost by category
$8,229K in totalData
Every source the sample is built from. Read only; nothing writes back.
Sample data. A fictional seven aircraft operator.
Sources
Read only. Your flight, maintenance, and accounting systems stay the record. Built for Part 135 operators with recurring flying, typically 4 to 25 aircraft.
ProEdge connects all three.
Your books know what you spent.
Financials
Your flight system knows what you flew.
Flight operations
Your maintenance records know what broke.
Maintenance
Aircraft economics, N230XQ
Rotation economics, ABQ to HOB and back
$681K of costs over 1,040 block hours is $655 an hour.
One aircraft and one of its rotations, traced from three systems. Select any figure to see the records behind it.
The calculations as text
- Revenue per hour. $1,227K of flight revenue over 1,040 block hours is $1,180 an hour. Sources: Flight revenue, Block hours.
- Cost to fly per hour. $681K of costs over 1,040 block hours is $655 an hour. Sources: Fuel, Work orders, Crew duty pay, Landing and handling, Overhaul quote, Block hours.
- Fixed cost. Crew salaries, insurance, financing, hangar, and general and administrative add to $506K. Sources: Crew salaries, Insurance, Aircraft financing, Hangar, General and administrative.
- Days out of service. 12 days down, from maintenance tracking. Sources: Days down.
- Fully loaded breakeven. $506K of fixed cost over $525 of contribution an hour is 964 hours. Sources: Fixed cost, Revenue per hour, Cost to fly per hour.
- Cushion. 1,040 block hours flown less 964 to break even leaves 76 hours. Sources: Block hours, Fully loaded breakeven.
- Block hours. Two legs of 1.4 block hours, out and back, is 2.8 block hours. Sources: Rotation.
- Revenue. $1,760 outbound and $185 on the return is $1,945 of revenue. Sources: Rotation.
- Trip floor. $349 of engine and propeller reserves, $1,005 of fuel, $360 of maintenance, $120 of crew duty pay and $256 of landing and handling make a $2,090 trip floor, $746 an hour over 2.8 block hours. Sources: Rotation, Overhaul quote.
- Under its floor. A $2,090 trip floor less $1,945 of revenue leaves the rotation $145 under its floor. Sources: Trip floor, Revenue.
- Tail economics. 76 hours above breakeven at $525 of contribution an hour is $40K above full cost. Sources: Cushion, Revenue per hour, Cost to fly per hour.
- Trip economics. One rotation in a slow week, $145 under its $2,090 trip floor. Sources: Under its floor, Trip floor.
- Price floors. The $2,090 floor less $185 of return revenue, over 2,444 chargeable pounds outbound, is $0.78 a pound. Sources: Trip floor, Revenue.
Your books show $6.41M. Flying the fleet at full cost takes $8.23M.
Fleet financials
Operating expense, trailing twelve months
To full cost
The ledger shows $6.41M of operating expense. Full cost is $8.23M once aircraft financing and engine reserves are counted.
It is the same record your board, your lender, or a buyer can audit, figure by figure.
Operating expense
Aircraft financing
Engine and propeller reserves
Full cost
Also in the report: utilization by tail and month, and disruption cost where your records support it.
The fleet average hides the tails that lose money.
Every tail against its own fully loaded breakeven, from the records you already keep. Select one to see what drives it.
| Tail | Block hours | Revenue per hour | Cost to fly per hour | Fixed cost | Fully loaded breakeven | Cushion, hours | Cushion, dollars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N221XQ | 1,250 | $1,252 | $648 | $512K | 848 | 402 | $243K |
| N225XQ | 1,125 | $1,319 | $671 | $538K | 830 | 295 | $191K |
| N230XQ | 1,040 | $1,180 | $655 | $506K | 964 | 76 | $40K |
| N241XQ | 960 | $1,402 | $702 | $561K | 801 | 159 | $111K |
| N256XQ | 875 | $1,214 | $662 | $541K | 980 | (105) | ($58K) |
| N262XQ | 800 | $1,234 | $689 | $529K | 971 | (171) | ($93K) |
| N278XQ | 625 | $1,364 | $716 | $544K | 840 | (215) | ($139K) |
| Fleet | 6,675 | $1,277 | $674 | $3,731K | 6,186 | 489 | $295K |
The fleet line shows revenue and cost to fly per hour as averages weighted by block hours.
The fleet line converts the fleet's $295K cushion to hours at its average contribution of $603 an hour, which gives 489 hours. The tails add up to 441, because an hour is worth a different amount on every tail. That gap is why a fleet average misleads.
Illustrative output. Fictional seven aircraft operator. The fleet clears its full cost by $295K while three tails lose $290K between them.
Price the rotation, not the leg.
The leg home flies whether it's full or empty. Its cost belongs to the trip that caused it, and its empty space has its own floor.
One rotation in a slow week, ABQ to HOB and back.
The leg home flies anyway. Freight added here costs about $0.11 a pound.
Rotation, 2.8 block hours
$145 short of its trip floor. $1,710 short of fully loaded breakeven.
N230XQ clears its breakeven over the year. This rotation misses its floor. Both are true, and only the trip view shows the second.
What the trip floor is made of$2,090
That is $746 an hour against the tail's $655 average. Short legs cost more per hour than the tail's average: more fuel per hour in the climb, and a landing fee every 1.4 hours.
Trip floor
What flying the trip adds in cost, including the leg home: fuel, maintenance and engine reserves by the hour, crew duty pay, and landing and handling fees. The floor for a spot quote.
Fully loaded breakeven
The trip floor plus the trip's share of the aircraft's fixed cost. The hurdle recurring work has to clear on average. A trip below it can still make sense when the aircraft would otherwise sit and the trip clears its floor.
Every lane, both directions, per chargeable pound.
ABQ to HOB and back, the sample lane
Dimensional divisor
At divisor 139, freight lighter than 12.4 lb per cubic foot bills by volume. A 48 by 40 by 48 inch pallet weighing 350 pounds bills at 664 pounds, worth $478 at this lane's yield.
At divisor 166, freight lighter than 10.4 lb per cubic foot bills by volume. A 48 by 40 by 48 inch pallet weighing 350 pounds bills at 556 pounds, worth $400 at this lane's yield.
At divisor 264, freight lighter than 6.5 lb per cubic foot bills by volume. A 48 by 40 by 48 inch pallet weighing 350 pounds bills at 350 pounds, worth $252 at this lane's yield.
A Caravan's practical payload over its cabin volume works out to roughly 6.5 pounds per cubic foot, which makes a divisor near 264 cost neutral for this aircraft.
If this aircraft flew under a block hour contract, a renewal would have to clear $1,142 an hour to cover its full cost. It averages $1,180 today.
Return leg floor
Freight added to a leg that flies anyway costs only handling and the fuel for the weight: about $0.11 a pound here, against an outbound yield of $0.72. Price the empty space against that floor.
Illustrative. Fictional operator, schedule, and fleet rate for fixed cost.
Every number shows where it came from.
Recorded, allocated, or modeled, with recorded figures reconciled to your general ledger. An estimate is never presented as a booked dollar.
N221XQ, annual cost
$1,322K
Reconciled $940K
94% of recorded cost ties to the ledger for the period.
- Recorded
- From a system of record.
- Allocated
- Shared cost assigned by a driver you can change.
- Modeled
- An estimate that carries its assumption.
- Reconciled
- Recorded cost that ties to your ledger.
Allocated figures use block hours unless you choose another driver. Modeled figures carry their assumption with them: here, the overhaul quote divided by the hours between overhauls. Illustrative figures for a fictional operator.
Kept current after every close.
The first report shows where you stand. After that, the same record is rebuilt each time your books close, and the prices you are about to quote are checked against it.
Keep, redeploy, or sell N256XQ, N262XQ and N278XQ.
Reprice, consolidate, or drop the slow week rotation.
Set a return rate above the floor.
Add tail classes to the ledger.
A $2,090 floor less $1,945 of revenue is $145.
Every month
Close
Your month closes the way it always has. Nothing changes in your systems.
Refresh
Tail and trip economics are rebuilt from the new exports and reconciled to the ledger.
Check
New quotes and renewals are tested against their floor and hurdle before they go out.
A quote of $1,945 for the HOB rotation lands $145 under its $2,090 floor. It is flagged before it goes out.
Read
The trips and renewals you priced last month show up in this month's numbers, against their floor.
- Next: operating events, priced
Next month
ProEdge shows the numbers and the decision they inform. Your team makes the call.
The figures as text
- Three tails below full cost. The cushions after full cost of N256XQ, N262XQ and N278XQ add to $290K below full cost. Keep, redeploy, or sell N256XQ, N262XQ and N278XQ.
- Slow week rotation, $145 under its floor. A $2,090 floor less $1,945 of revenue is $145. Reprice, consolidate, or drop the slow week rotation.
- Empty return space, floor $0.11 a pound. Freight on a leg that flies anyway costs the handling and the fuel for the weight: about $0.11 a pound, modeled. Set a return rate above the floor.
- Code every cost to a tail, 79% recorded today. $6,499K of $8,229K is recorded at the tail: 79%. Add tail classes to the ledger.
Four steps. Nothing installed.
01
A short call
Your fleet, customers, how you price, and which systems hold what. We tell you whether the analysis will be useful before you send anything.
Fit screen
Strong fit
02
You send exports
Read only exports from the systems you already run. No logins, nothing installed.
- Financial
- Flight
- Maintenance
Read only
03
We build and reconcile
Tail and trip economics built from your records and reconciled to your financial statements.
75% Recorded at the tail
94% of recorded, reconciled to the ledger
04
We walk it through
A working session with the owner and your finance and operations leads. You keep the report, the source reconciliation, and the methodology behind every figure.
What we ask for
- Financial records, from your accounting system.
- Flight records, from your flight operations system.
- Maintenance records, from your maintenance tracking.
- Fleet and contract terms.
Exports from the systems you already run. We share the detailed list once the mutual NDA is signed.
Read only. Your systems stay the record.
Nothing written back. We start from exports you send. Any later refresh is read only, and you control the access.
Your data stays yours. Your raw operating data is used to deliver your analysis. We don't sell or share identifiable operator data, and any anonymized benchmarking or shared learning requires a separate agreement. Mutual NDA before anything moves.
Decision support, not control. Informs pricing, fleet and budget decisions. No dispatch, no operational control, no airworthiness determinations.
Economics is where Flight Systems starts, not where it ends.
Once each tail and trip has a price, every delay, grounded day and scheduling choice can be priced the same way. Flight Systems is being developed to connect that economic picture with the operating events and management decisions that drive it.
Each stage lights up here after an operator has used it, not before.
- Now
Tail and trip economics, kept current
What each tail, trip, and lane has to earn, refreshed after every close, with quotes and renewals checked against their floor.
Available now. First operators in progress.
- Next
Operating events, priced
What a grounded day, a late departure, or an overhaul costs, with the quote and renewal check built into the product.
In development
- Then
Decisions and measured outcomes
Which decision changed the number, and whether it worked, read against the economics it was meant to move.
In development
Stages after the first are in development and are not part of the current offer.
Questions
Is this a fit for us?
It's built for Part 135 cargo and mixed operators with recurring flying, such as contract cargo, scheduled freight, or regular charter lanes, typically 4 to 25 aircraft with at least a year of records. Ad hoc charter gets less from the lane and direction views, and per seat passenger economics are not yet part of the offer. If you fly one or two aircraft, a well kept spreadsheet may be all you need. The analysis is most useful when you are bidding or renewing a contract, adding or retiring an aircraft, refinancing, preparing for a sale, or setting next year's budget.
Why not build this in a spreadsheet?
You can, once. Keeping it reconciled every month, across three systems, with allocations that hold up in front of a lender, is the part that breaks. That ongoing work is what the monthly record does, and the method behind every number comes with it.
Our records are messy. Does that matter?
That's normal. Every figure is marked recorded, allocated, or modeled, recorded figures are reconciled to your books where they tie, and gaps are shown rather than filled with guesses.
How do you split overhead across tails?
By block hours unless you have a better driver. The method appears on every allocated figure, and you can change it.
Is this a one time report?
No. The diagnostic is how it starts. After that, the record is refreshed after each monthly close, with new quotes and renewals checked against their floor and hurdle before they go out. Flight Systems is being developed as the ongoing operating layer above those economics, connecting aircraft availability, maintenance events and operating performance to management decisions and measured outcomes. We won't sell those capabilities until they've been validated in live operations.
What does it cost?
The diagnostic is a fixed fee set by fleet size. We share it on the first call, before any data moves.
Find out what every tail and trip has to earn.
Five questions about your operation, then your details. It takes about two minutes and tells both of us whether the analysis will be useful before you send anything.
Read only. Mutual NDA before any data moves.
- Flying
- Fleet
- Visibility
- Pricing
- Records
- Profile
1 of 5: Flying pattern
How much of your flying repeats week to week?
Contract cargo, scheduled service and regular charter lanes behave differently from one off trips.
2 of 5: Fleet
How many aircraft are on your certificate?
Tail economics start to diverge once a fleet has more than a few aircraft.
3 of 5: Economic visibility
How well do you know what each tail earns today?
Not the fleet total. Each aircraft, after its share of fixed cost.
4 of 5: Pricing basis
How are trips and contracts priced today?
Spot quotes, renewals and backhaul freight each need a different number underneath them.
5 of 5: Record readiness
Which records can you export today?
Your general ledger, flight leg history, and maintenance tracking.
Your operation
Where should we send the follow up?
A member of the ProEdge team will follow up directly. Nothing is shared until an NDA is in place.
How we handle what you send: Privacy Policy
Your fit screen result
Your request has been recorded.
A member of the ProEdge team will follow up directly to confirm which records you have. Nothing is shared until an NDA is in place.
Field notes
Occasional notes on what Flight Systems is learning in live Part 135 operations: what reconciled, what didn't, and what we changed because of it.
How we handle what you send: Privacy Policy
Only when there is something worth reporting.
You're on the list. We'll be in touch.