The Telecom-to-Aviation Playbook for Scaling Airspace Systems

From the Travel Tech Podcast newsletter for episode 6, The Telecom-to-Aviation Playbook for Scaling Airspace Systems.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, also streaming on Spotify and YouTube.

In this episode, I chat with Amit Ganjoo, CEO and founder of ANRA Technologies, a company that has spent over a decade building and operating UTM and U-space systems across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. We explore how uncrewed traffic management is moving beyond research trials and pilot programs into live, safety-critical operations, with systems now supporting thousands of daily BVLOS flights across utilities, logistics, and public-sector use cases.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

• The "Maker Mindset" in Aviation: Amit shares how scratch-building an aerobatic aircraft from a 1969 Corvair engine shaped his first-principles approach to solving complex airspace challenges.
• A Lesson from Telecom History: We discuss why the drone industry must avoid the fragmented mistakes of early cellular networks (GSM vs. CDMA) by prioritizing global interoperability and common standards now.
• Finding the "Seams": A crucial engineering insight: complex systems rarely fail at the center; they fail at the interfaces or "seams" where different components and edge cases meet.
• From Research to Real-World Scale: Discover how ANRA is already powering thousands of daily commercial operations for partners like Amazon, DoorDash, and the New York Power Authority.

We hope you enjoy the conversation.

Alex Brooker, Host of the Travel Tech Podcast, Founder of Airside Labs