AircraftIQ, a new aircraft maintenance platform built for general aviation owners, partnerships, flight schools, clubs, and maintainers, has officially launched, “born out of a real-world emergency, weeks of recovery, and the overwhelming complexity of coordinating aircraft maintenance across multiple systems, shops, and records,” according to officials with the Orange County, California-based company.
The company’s origin traces back to an incident involving Co-Founder and CEO Brad Smith’s Cessna Cardinal, which is routinely rented out. During a flight in late 2025, a renter experienced an emergency landing on the sands of Huntington Beach, California.
While there were no injuries, the aftermath was anything but routine, according to Smith.
The aircraft had to be recovered from the beach, transported, disassembled, and inspected in detail. The wings were removed, the airframe was methodically evaluated, and multiple maintenance organizations were engaged to ensure the aircraft was returned to full airworthiness, he said. Coordinating the recovery alone required extensive communication between shops, inspectors, maintainers, and documentation handlers, along with careful tracking of logbook entries, approvals, and compliance requirements, he noted.
For Smith and Co-Founder and CRO Bill Forelli, the experience exposed a deeper, systemic issue in general aviation maintenance: Critical aircraft data is fragmented, difficult to access, and often managed with a lack of communication across involved parties, company officials said.
That realization became the foundation of AircraftIQ.
“That event made everything painfully clear,” said Smith. “The idea to do this existed in my mind for a long time. This event just pushed me to do something about it. We weren’t just dealing with a maintenance issue, we were dealing with a coordination problem. Logbooks were at home, records were in spreadsheets, squawks were in notes, and communication was spread across too many channels. Getting that aircraft back online safely took far more effort than it should have.”
Smith, a corporate jet pilot, CFII, and aircraft owner with thousands of hours across nearly 40 aircraft types, manages multiple piston aircraft, including a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza, a Cessna 177, and a Yak-52W, in addition to flying Gulfstreams and Citations in charter and private operations.
His experience managing aircraft across personal ownership, partnerships, a flight school, and professional aviation operations highlighted the same recurring problem: Maintenance data fragmentation and communication.
“I own multiple aircraft and manage even more on behalf of other owners,” Smith said. “I was juggling Apple Notes, spreadsheets, and logbooks just to stay on top of basic maintenance. After the second time I showed up to an annual without the logbooks, I knew something had to change.”
What began as a simple side project evolved into a fully integrated platform originally prototyped as “WrenchBud,” before becoming AircraftIQ.
Forelli, a private pilot and aviation content creator with a background in startup growth, sales leadership, and ad tech, brought a complementary perspective to the challenge.
“Brad had the real-world aviation problem and I immediately recognized it from a systems and scalability standpoint,” said Forelli. “This wasn’t just an inconvenience for Brad. It was a workflow problem that every aircraft owner and maintainer experiences constantly.”
AircraftIQ is designed to eliminate the fragmented tools currently used to manage aircraft maintenance, maintenance coordination, and scheduling by unifying records, logbooks, maintenance tracking, calendars, and communication into a single system.
Key capabilities include:
- Maintenance scheduling and inspection tracking
- Mechanic and shop communication tools
- FAA-compliant digital logbook access
- AI-assisted logbook and maintenance record scanning and organization
- Centralized squawk tracking and resolution workflows
- Flight school and club scheduling
- Flight school and club billing and invoicing
- Maintenance cost estimation and quoting workflows
- Component lifecycle and trend tracking
- Partner and flying club scheduling and time tracking
- Maintenance shop invoicing and tracking.
AircraftIQ is now being used by early adopters across multiple piston aircraft types, with additional features in development focused on predictive maintenance insights and deeper maintenance intelligence tools, according to company officials.
“The goal is simple,” Forelli said. “Give aircraft owners, flight school operators, and flying club managers back their time, reduce unnecessary cost, and make maintenance coordination something that finally feels organized and predictable.”
For more information: Aircraft-IQ.com
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