Goodwin Acquires STACK.aero to Link Charter Software With Payments
Why It MattersThe deal shows charter software platforms folding trip sales, supplier payments and commission accounting into a single system, narrowing the gap between a broker's CRM and the money movement behind each flight.
What happened
Goodwin announced on October 20, 2026, that it had acquired STACK.aero, bringing an aviation CRM and business operations platform into its charter technology and payments business. The stated aim is to connect the work of selling and managing a private jet charter with the financial processes behind each trip.
STACK.aero was founded in 2014 and builds its software on Salesforce. Its customers are charter brokers, aircraft operators and corporate flight departments. Goodwin is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and develops charter software alongside banking-service integrations and automated financial tools. "The charter broker isn't going anywhere," Goodwin co-founder Tolga Demirel said in the acquisition announcement.
STACK.aero will retain its own brand and product. Greg Jarrett remains CEO and the existing team stays in place. Existing customers can keep using STACK.aero as they do today, with no required migration and no obligation to adopt additional services; new integrations will be optional. The companies have not provided a detailed integration timetable. They describe plans to connect workflows and support faster payments where available, and the announcement does not establish that every proposed capability is already accessible to every customer.
STACK.aero's broker platform tracks trip history, preferences, identification data and revenue, alongside quoting, trip requests and management reporting. It supports web-based proposals and aircraft sourcing through marketplace connections and a broker's own aircraft database. It has an Avinode integration for two-way data exchange, and an Adobe Acrobat Sign integration, announced in 2023, that lets contracts go out for signature inside the platform, with signature-status tracking and automatic document archiving.
Goodwin's existing banking capabilities include portals showing balances, funded trips, payment status and pending disbursements, plus trip-specific accounts and digital records. Its Dynamic Trip Ledger and Invoicing links invoices, operator bills, vendor payments and commissions to individual trips. Goodwin also provides tools for aircraft sourcing, proposals and payment collection; its broker software can turn operator quotations into client-facing proposals, with the broker adding a margin before sending them. Goodwin is a financial technology provider, and its banking services are provided by partner banks.
The STACK.aero transaction follows Goodwin's acquisition of aviation catering platform DineUp, announced in September. That deal was designed to bring catering orders, delivery tracking and related charges into the charter workflow, with line items feeding into Goodwin's trip ledger. It began with an initial rollout to selected brokers in supported cities, followed by wider availability.
Industry impact & what to watch
Charter brokerage runs on a chain of separate records: the quote, the operator's bill, the client's payment, the vendor invoices and the broker's commission, often held in different systems and reconciled by hand after the trip. Two acquisitions in two months, DineUp in September and STACK.aero now, show Goodwin assembling the front-office CRM, the trip ledger and the ancillary services into one environment. For a segment where margin is added by the broker between operator quote and client price, tying each of those figures to a single trip record is the structural change on offer.
The decision to leave STACK.aero's brand, team and product untouched, and to make new integrations optional, matters because CRM data is what brokers guard most closely. Customers who chose STACK.aero as a standalone Salesforce-based tool are not being pushed onto a payments stack, so adoption of the combined workflow will depend on whether brokers see value in it rather than on forced migration. Marketplace and sourcing links such as the Avinode integration stay in place, which keeps the platform connected to the way brokers already find aircraft.
The next milestone is the integration timetable, which the companies have not provided. Which STACK.aero customers actually switch on the payment and ledger connections, and where faster payments become available, will show whether the combination changes how brokers and operators settle trips or simply sits beside existing practice.
