PricingAbout 45 minutes

How to Price Aviation Detailing Services

Pricing aviation detailing services correctly is the difference between a healthy business and a treadmill. This guide walks through the seven steps that get you from blank page to a defensible pricing structure you can quote from confidently.

CoreOP Pricing Desk

Pricing Strategy and Quoting

Published 2026-04-26, updated 2026-04-28

Most aviation detailers price by intuition. They look at what the work feels like it should cost, factor in what they think the client will pay, and quote a number. This works at very small volumes but breaks down as the operation grows. A structured pricing process produces consistency across crew members, defends margin against client pressure, and lets the business scale without the owner manually pricing every quote.

The seven steps below assume you have at least six months of operating data. If you are brand new and do not have your own data, use industry benchmarks from the pricing guides as your starting point and refine after the first quarter of work.

Steps

Step 110 minutes
Identify your cost basis
Add up your total monthly costs across labor, materials, and overhead. Labor is your crew compensation including taxes, benefits, and tips passed through. Materials is chemicals, pads, microfiber, and equipment depreciation. Overhead is rent, software, insurance, fuel, and the owner's time on non billable work. Divide the total by the average billable hours your operation produces in a month. The result is your true hourly cost. Most aviation detailing operations land between $45 and $85 per hour true cost.
Step 25 minutes
Choose a pricing model
Pick the model that best matches your operation. Per square foot pricing scales cleanly with aircraft size and is the most transparent. Hourly pricing rewards efficient crews on familiar work but requires careful tracking. Fixed bid pricing maximizes margin on familiar aircraft and maximizes risk on unfamiliar ones. Most operators use fixed bid for routine work and hourly with a not to exceed cap for unfamiliar aircraft or restoration scope.
Step 310 minutes
Adjust for aircraft type and condition
Build a pricing matrix by aircraft category. Light jet base rate, midsize multiplier, large cabin multiplier, ultra long range multiplier. Add a condition multiplier on top. Excellent condition at 1.0x. Average at 1.25x. Poor at 1.75x. Severely neglected at 2.5x or higher. The matrix becomes the pricing engine for your quoting workflow.
Step 48 minutes
Build your service line items
Break your services into discrete line items rather than one bundled price. Exterior wash. Brightwork polish. Interior detail. Leather conditioning. Glass treatment. Cabin sanitization with documentation. Each line gets its own price. Itemized quotes close better because the client sees value at every level.
Step 55 minutes
Set tier pricing for plan comparisons
Build three pricing tiers that bundle line items into packages. Essential clean covers exterior wash and basic interior. Full detail adds polish and leather treatment. Premium protection adds ceramic coating and documentation. Tier pricing simplifies the sales conversation and increases average job value because clients usually pick the middle tier rather than the cheapest.
Step 65 minutes
Test pricing with a small client sample
Before rolling out the new pricing across the full client base, test it with five to ten new quotes. Track which tier the client selects, whether they push back on price, and whether the quote closes. Use the results to calibrate before applying to existing recurring clients.
Step 72 minutes
Refine based on close rate and margin
After thirty days of new pricing, check two metrics. Close rate should stay above sixty percent on qualified quotes. Gross margin should improve compared to the previous pricing. If close rate drops sharply, prices may be too high. If margin does not improve, prices may have been too low to begin with. Adjust the matrix and tier structure quarterly based on the data.