Our stories.

Aircon provides full transparency into every pricing decision, ensuring each quote is auditable, traceable, and aligned with commercial governance. Unlike generic AI tools that lack explainability, Aircon reveals the logic behind each recommendation...showing applied rules, constraints, and margin impact—while capturing any operator overrides with full context. This builds internal trust, improves pricing consistency, and enables management to review decisions, enforce governance, and confidently scale operations with clear accountability.

In air freight, a quote and a bookable shipment aren't the same thing: a quote is just a price, while a bookable shipment is a commitment the forwarder can truly stand behind. A shipment is only bookable when critical conditions are validated before the quote goes out, including current pricing, intentional margins, operational feasibility, clear responsibility, and visible decision logic. When these checks are skipped, costs surface downstream as exceptions, rework, credits, and eroded trust. The industry's next phase isn't just more automation or faster quoting, but better commitment quality, where the winning forwarders will be the ones who make promises they can actually keep.

In this Next Level Up podcast episode, Chris Condon, founder of Aircon, talks about how his startup is building a “decision layer” for air cargo that offers freight forwarders real-time intelligence at the point of quoting – margins, route feasibility, and carrier reliability. He uses his own career, from forklift driver to freight forwarding executive, as a backdrop to argue that the industry is too focused on cost and not enough on service and reliability, which are the real differentiators, and sees AI as a force multiplier that allows operators to focus on relationships and higher-value work.

Aircon’s Feasibility Validation Use Case is a Constraint-Aware solution that matches pricing to real operational realities for air freight. The platform makes sure that every commitment is executable, not just commercially attractive, by analyzing routing, capacity, IAC compliance, airport rules and commodity restrictions before issuing a quote. This integrated approach eliminates downstream service corrections and non-compliant shipments allowing freight forwarders to keep their promise and deliver reliably through validated and feasible quoting.

The real problem with air freight is not execution it is commitment. Quotes go out before capacity, trucking, handling and compliance are really confirmed, so margin leaks and exceptions build up before a shipment even moves. Aircon’s answer is not another marketplace or rate screen. Instead it is a decision layer that combines pricing, eligibility, routing and operational constraints into one governed call before the quote is sent...so forwarders can make promises they can keep.

Aircon addresses a common challenge in freight forwarding of commercial rules residing in spreadsheets and policy docs instead of inside the quoting workflow. As an embedded control layer, it automatically enforces margin floors, carrier exclusions, and customer agreements at the point a quote is generated, flags breaches before they get to the customer, and logs all overrides with a full audit trail.

Aircon’s Pre-Exposure Quote Validation adds a real-time commercial control layer directly into the freight forwarder’s existing quoting workflow, assessing pricing, service feasibility, routing constraints and margin…before any quote leaves the desk. Teams are given a fully validated decision with clear logic at the time it matters most, meaning every quote issued is commercially viable and operationally deliverable, not finding expensive errors after booking.

SkyNet’s manual quoting process was unable to cope with the growing demand, so they placed Aircon’s AI decision layer alongside their existing workflow. The result? Agent-generated quotes made up 58% of the volume, manual hours dropped from 50 to 21 per month, win rates improved by 12%, and they hit a record $204K in quoted revenue in a single month.

When sound logic is no longer enough, how can freight forwarders navigate turbulence within the air freight market?

The freight industry’s obsession with speed—believing the first quote wins—can backfire. A forwarder lost a $50K account despite responding in 47 minutes, while a competitor who took 3 hours won by offering tailored options and solving business problems. Speed matters, but insight matters more. Top forwarders ask smarter questions before quoting, uncovering real deadlines, risks, and strategic needs. They respond fast and thoughtfully—leading to higher win rates and better margins. The key isn’t speed-to-quote, but speed-to-insight.

Air freight has always favored the giants, but network effects are changing the game. With Aircon’s AI agents capturing expertise and sharing intelligence across a connected platform, forwarders can quote in 90 seconds, access better rates, and resolve issues before they happen—boosting win rates by 40% and doubling revenue in just 90 days.

Aircon, the freight tech company founded by logistics veterans, has raised $8M in funding to accelerate its mission of empowering independent freight forwarders. Its flagship product, Aircon, uses AI-powered agents to automate quoting, booking, and exception management. Enabling forwarders to double revenue in just 90 days.