Never miss an episode

Get new Travel Tech Podcast episodes, aviation AI insights, and use-case deep dives delivered to your inbox.

Show Notes

Julie Garland and Sarah Owen bring a combined career span that covers almost every corner of aviation to the Travel Tech Podcast's first in-person episode, recorded in London. Julie is CEO of Avtrain, Europe's leading drone training and certification body, and president of the Joint European Drone Associations; she began as an aircraft maintenance engineer with Aer Lingus, progressed to commercial captain and type-rating instructor, then qualified as a barrister specialising in aviation law before pivoting into drone regulation — a sequence she frames as deliberate ten-year blocks rather than a single fixed path. Sarah Owen, VP for Europe Travel and Transportation at Sutherland and chair of the Aviation Club of the UK Forum, has held senior roles at Google, Salesforce, and Cyient, and led commercial strategy at Assaia, a computer vision company focused on aircraft turnaround. Together they examine why Europe's regulate-first approach contrasts sharply with the operate-then-regulate models in the US and China, and why missing planning, noise, and airspace-access frameworks — not the drones themselves — are pushing some European delivery operators to concentrate expansion in the US, UK, and UAE. The conversation also covers AI tools such as OptiFlight, which already cuts fuel burn by roughly 5–6% during climb by rebalancing thrust in real time, the data-silo problem that prevents airports, handlers, and airlines from sharing operational intelligence, the drone industry's nascent push toward a just culture of mandated safety reporting, and the stubbornly stalled gender statistics — female representation sitting around 5% across pilots and air traffic controllers and as low as 2–2.5% in maintenance — that both guests argue the industry must confront far more urgently.