Business and operations management for airports.
Ironwood Aero is the integrated, real-time business and operations management platform for airports. Every movement, service and system on one live spine, and into a data warehouse for insight, machine learning and AI.
Where we stand
There are a few hundred major airports in the world, and many thousands of everything else. Regional fields, municipal airports, flying schools, private strips. They do the same job as the big ones. Aircraft arrive, services get delivered, someone has to bill for it, and someone has to answer to a regulator. They just do it with a fraction of the people.
Nearly all aviation software is built for the few hundred.
So we built this instead. One platform covering movements, the aircraft identity, the apron services, the billing, the permits, and the record an authority needs. Not fifteen modules you assemble over three years. One system an airport runs from day one with the team it already has.
Two things we think matter more than any feature list.
Shared across every airfield on the network, and resolved as of the date of the event rather than as of today. An aircraft that changed hands in 2023 bills correctly for 2023.
We run in East Africa, in Europe, and in South Africa. Not a copy pushed offshore to somebody else's region.
Smaller airports have been asked to accept less for a long time. We do not think they should have to.
airfields worldwide with no modern system — 91% of all active airports
of even medium commercial airports still run operations on paper and Excel
of airports the enterprise vendors actually serve — the top hubs only
The platform
Air traffic, apron, parking, fuel, ground power, billing, cameras — every thread of the airport on a single live spine, posted straight into your accounting system, and captured into a data warehouse for insight, ML and AI. The right data reaches the person or system that needs it, exactly when they need it.
Billing is one thread. An important one — but one.
How it works
Every movement, service and system integrated live — no silos, no double-entry. Data flows to the people and systems that need it, and straight into your ERP with a full audit trail.
Cameras, ADS-B and native rules do the work that used to be manual — identifying aircraft, capturing services, raising the right charge. Automation built in from the ground up, not bolted on.
Everything lands in a data warehouse: operational and strategic intelligence today, predictive maintenance, machine learning and AI tomorrow. Data as strategy, not decoration.
Proof — not a pitch
One thread, running live: an edge camera reads the tail, the platform identifies the aircraft against the registry, logs the movement — and yes, bills it. Proof the integrated platform is real, not slideware.
The majors are still specifying their computer-vision programmes. A South African platform is running one.
What we stand for
“I've been saying this since 2019. Now I've built it.”
— Hein Pretorius, Founder
Since 2019 we've argued that digital transformation is reinvention, not software; that automation belongs native and from the ground up; that data is strategy. Ironwood Aero is that conviction, built for airports — with the people who run them. We're a partner in reinvention, not a software vendor: we partner with our clients and the industry, and we don't sell a box and walk away.
We build alongside our clients and the industry — shaping the platform around how airports actually work, not selling and moving on.
Strategy and business purpose come first; technology serves them. It's the discipline behind everything we ship.
Automation and data are built in from the foundation — not bolted onto legacy tools years later.
One dataset, three audiences
Every airfield is a tenant; tenants roll into groups. The same real-time data — aggregated with minimal disclosure — serves the ramp, the portfolio and the state.
Run the field: movements, services, billing, cameras, apron, parking and capacity — on site or remotely.
Portfolio view across many fields — comparative performance and group reporting, without touching each field's private data.
Real-time aviation data at scale for transport, economic development and the national register.
Live where it matters
Insights
Where the industry actually leaks money, misses movements and flies blind — and what to do about it.
In 2019 I wrote down the seven things data science would do for an airport. I hadn't built any of it. This year I finished — here's where each one stands.
On time. On budget. Signed off. And four years later the data still doesn't tie. Why that is aviation's default outcome.
The most expensive software decisions are made before a vendor is ever called. Ask these first.
Most of the world's airfields will never justify a control tower. They still need to be run. Here's how.
Bolt-on automation inherits every flaw of the system beneath it. Built-in is a different animal.
Book a walkthrough, or explore a live demo now running in three countries.
