Before You...
Expand, Commit,
Independent aviation practitioners. On your side. Fast.
- Former airline CEOs, FAA leaders, operators, regulators, and technology executives
- Pressure-testing critical aviation decisions before significant capital or strategic commitments
- Risks uncovered earlier, teams aligned faster, decisions made with greater confidence
Advance with Conviction
Schedule a Conversation →How We Help
Challenge. Recommend. Implement.
Step 1
Challenge.
We challenge assumptions before they become expensive commitments.
Our practitioners ask the questions investors, boards, and leadership teams often don't know to ask, because we've operated airlines, regulated aviation, built technology companies, led acquisitions, and made these decisions ourselves.
Step 2
Recommend.
Working with your team, we recommend a stronger path forward.
Our recommendations are grounded in decades of practical experience leading aviation organizations through complex operational, regulatory, commercial, and strategic decisions.
Step 3
Implement.
If you decide you want help executing, we're ready.
Our practitioners can support implementations if you think additional experience creates value, but implementation isn't our core business focus and we don’t push to “sell” you on follow-on work.
Our first responsibility is helping you make the right decision.
Your Next Key Decision Deserves More Than Another Typical Consulting Report
It deserves leaders who've made these decisions. People who've sat in the CEO's chair, led airlines, regulated aviation, managed operations, and built technology companies, making decisions with real consequences.
Jim Barry
CEO, PASSUR Aerospace. Aviation technology and intelligence commercialization.
Mike Whitaker
FAA Administrator. Safety regulation and airspace modernization.
Mike Lewis
Boeing, Jeppesen, NASA. Technology commercialization and aviation safety.
Will Messenger
McKinsey & Co, Harvard Business School. Technology commercialization, corporate leadership, and business ethics.
Tony Krug
CFO with a NYSE-listed company.
Bridget Blaise-Shamai
Airline loyalty and customer experience strategy. VP, American Airlines.
Peter Bowler
Regional aviation operations and fleet management. CEO, American Eagle.
Tim Campbell
Low-cost carrier strategy and operations. SVP, American Airlines.
Lorne Cass
Air traffic management and NextGen implementation. RTCA Chair Emeritus, Delta and American Airlines.
Dave Dickson
Aviation safety and regulatory leadership. EY Aviation Practice lead.
Charles Duncan
Large-scale carrier management and transformation. Airline President.
Craig Fuller
Former: RTCA Chairman, White House Cabinet Secretary, FAA Management Advisory Council member.
Mike Hertzendorf
UAS, eVTOL, and defense aviation. Chief of Staff, 82nd Airborne Division.
Mark Hopkins
ATC operations and airspace modernization. Delta Air Lines.
John Illson
International safety standards and risk oversight. Airline captain, FAA senior advisor.
Ray Johns
Retired Four-Star General. Former Commander, U.S. Transportation Command. CEO, FlightSafety International.
Lee Moak
Former President of ALPA representing 50,000+ pilots
Leo Prusak
Digital transformation and IT infrastructure. FAA.
Jill Surdek
Crew management and workforce strategy. VP, American Airlines.
Tom White
Dispatch, crew scheduling, and operations management. EVP, PASSUR and FAA.
When to Engage Aspect
The best time to talk to us is before the commitment, not after the surprise.
For Investors and Boards
- Before investing in an unfamiliar aviation segment
- Before a major follow-on investment or acquisition
- Before a portfolio company launches a new aviation capability
- When the board wants an independent operational perspective
- When management's assumptions need to be pressure-tested
For Operators and Leadership Teams
- Before taking a new product or capability to the aviation market
- Before committing to a major technology, fleet, or infrastructure decision
- When a go-to-market plan needs a real-world reality check
- When adoption is slower than the business case assumed
- When you need practitioner insight your team doesn't have in-house
Boards, advisors, and consultants all play an important role. Our role is different: bringing practitioners together to pressure-test how a decision will actually perform inside the aviation system, while there's still time to act on what we find.
Areas of Specialization
When we say aviation, here's what we mean.
Commercial, operational, and strategic expertise spanning the full aviation value chain, from the airspace system itself to the technologies and investments reshaping it.
Airspace & Operations
- Air Traffic Management (ATM)
- UAS Traffic Management (UTM)
- Airport Operations
- Network Optimization
- Decision Support Systems
Commercial Aviation
- Airline Operations
- Revenue & Commercial Strategy
- Maintenance & Reliability
- Customer Experience
- Crew & Workforce Strategy
Digital Aviation
- AI & Machine Learning
- Data & Analytics
- Predictive Maintenance
- Decision Support Systems
- Digital Transformation
Emerging Aviation & Military Aviation
- Advanced Air Mobility
- Autonomous Flight
- Drones & Hybrid-Electric
- Commercialization
- Risk & Operational Readiness
Investment & Strategy
- Commercial Due Diligence
- M&A & Investment Reviews
- Customer Value Assessment
- Board & Executive Advisory
- Regulatory Strategy
Certification & Safety
- FAA Certification
- Safety Management Systems
- Regulatory Strategy
- International Standards
- Risk-Based Oversight
Who We Are - The Aspect Group
Our network of practitioners and decision makers has been on every side of aviation technology deployment—introducing technologies to market, assessing and reviewing them within government agencies, and purchasing them for airlines, airports, and government operations.
We're not theorists or change-management generalists. We’re seasoned professionals whose distinctive expertise informs better investments.
The right questions: We’ve seen what kills investments in aviation technology. Our process pressure-tests ideas with multiple independent, experienced experts and surfaces the confirmation biases and blind spots that plague internal assessments.
The right people: Our network reaches every corner of aviation–from C-suites, to certification offices, to flight operations, to users, to the engineers who have designed those few transformative successes of the 21st century.
The results: We provide actionable investment intelligence in 4 to 6 weeks–identifying gaps, disconnects, and risks that can delay time-to-market, and devising solutions to get back on track.
Tune into
The Vertical Space
podcast
We co-host the industry’s leading podcast at the intersection of technology and flight.
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