https://airsidelabs.com/blog?category=newsletter Every issue of the Travel Tech Podcast newsletter from Airside Labs: the episode, the key takeaways and what to build next. en-gb Tue, 03 Nov 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-can-chatgpt-find-your-hotel https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-can-chatgpt-find-your-hotel Tue, 03 Nov 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Answer Engine Optimisation AI Agent Fleets A hotel can hold billions of pixels of its own ballroom and still be invisible to ChatGPT. This week's guest says his team took one Bay Area property from undiscoverable to first in its region, and… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-who-can-still-design-a-plane https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-who-can-still-design-a-plane Wed, 28 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Aircraft Certification Depth Lost Engineering Knowledge Airbus's last clean sheet design was the A350. Boeing's was the 787, over 20 years ago. This week's guest thinks the skill of designing an aircraft from scratch is quietly retiring with the engineers… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-cancel-the-flights-so-nobody-misses-connections https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-cancel-the-flights-so-nobody-misses-connections Thu, 15 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Driven Decisions Aviation Knowledge Graph When Kevin and I first tested an AI on a real ops problem (three inbound flights landing together, protect every connection), it answered with flawless logic: cancel the flights. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-code-is-twenty-percent-of-the-thing https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-code-is-twenty-percent-of-the-thing Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Domain Knowledge Value Vibe Coding Limits Every week, someone asks a travel software agency why they can't just vibe code the platform themselves. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-pricing-fight-inside-every-airline https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-pricing-fight-inside-every-airline Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast OTA Competitive Monitoring Metasearch Visibility Everyone predicted AI chat would kill metasearch. Ask a chatbot for the cheapest fare to Europe, and why would you ever open a comparison site again? https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-who-your-ai-travel-agent-actually-works-for https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-who-your-ai-travel-agent-actually-works-for Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Agentic Trust Infrastructure Dual Agency Problem Read the small print on the big booking sites and you'll find the offer at the top may not be the one in your best interest, just the one that pays best. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-chatgpt-said-the-visa-would-be-accepted-it-wasnt https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-chatgpt-said-the-visa-would-be-accepted-it-wasnt Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Visa Misinformation eVisa Disruption Rob Lee's company shares an office wall in Chicago with the Chinese consulate, and every day he watches hundreds of people file in to pay $150 to $170 for a visa. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-deal-ai-can-never-find https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-deal-ai-can-never-find Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Flight Subscription Economics Loyalty vs Subscriptions In 1990, Mark Cuban sold his first company for $6 million, went out with his friends, and while still drunk, rang American Airlines to ask whether they sold lifetime flight passes. They did. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-above-china-your-starlink-doesnt-exist https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-above-china-your-starlink-doesnt-exist Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Offline First Architecture In Flight AI Agents Somewhere above Chinese airspace, a passenger asks for a glass of water and the answer, technically, is no. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-corp-travel-so-why-cant-i-just-book-my-own-trip https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-corp-travel-so-why-cant-i-just-book-my-own-trip Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Corporate Travel Middleware Traveler Dual Identity Caitlin Gomez signs up for rideshare with her personal Gmail, like everyone else. Somewhere in a corporate travel program she is also a Head of Growth on the speaking circuit, and nothing in the… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-89-of-airline-carts-never-convert https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-89-of-airline-carts-never-convert Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airline Cart Abandonment Identity & Checkout Layer Kameron Bertine has never worked for an airline, an OTA, or a GDS, and that's exactly why his read on airline checkout is worth your time. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-feedback-you-dont-notice-youre-getting https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-feedback-you-dont-notice-youre-getting Wed, 12 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Kind Not Nice Post-Corporate Leadership This week I handed the microphone to the two people who know exactly where the bodies are buried: Adrian McKenzie and Oli Deakin, my leadership team colleagues from Snowflake Software (in its second… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-an-airline-is-just-a-software-stack-nobody-finished-building https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-an-airline-is-just-a-software-stack-nobody-finished-building Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airline Tech Stacks Fuel Price Risk There's a moment in this conversation where my guest compares running an airline to selling hamburgers: your meat costs triple overnight, but you can't triple your menu price on the same day. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-nobody-would-fund-a-human-for-this https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-nobody-would-fund-a-human-for-this Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Phone Calling Hotel Booking Gaps I've now recorded enough of these conversations that I stopped believing in coincidence. Four founders, none of whom have met each other, working in hotel distribution, airport maintenance, call… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-fly-first-regulate-later-why-europes-rules-are-pushing-drones-abroad https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-fly-first-regulate-later-why-europes-rules-are-pushing-drones-abroad Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Drone Regulation Gaps AI Flight Operations Julie Garland started as an aircraft maintenance engineer on Aer Lingus heavy checks, went on to fly as a commercial captain, then qualified as a barrister specializing in aviation law before… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-real-ai-bottleneck-in-travel-content-is-copyright-not-hallucination https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-real-ai-bottleneck-in-travel-content-is-copyright-not-hallucination Mon, 06 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Content Licensing Cruise Documentation Complexity There's a moment in this conversation where my guest says, flatly, "we were selling masks." He's not talking about PPE. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-travel-inspiration-lives-on-tiktok-the-booking-still-lives-in-47 https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-travel-inspiration-lives-on-tiktok-the-booking-still-lives-in-47 Mon, 29 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Social Travel Discovery On-Device AI Privacy A friend who has actually been somewhere will always beat an algorithm that has indexed everywhere. That is not a sentimental observation. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-computer-says-no-why-airlines-wont-take-your-upgrade-money https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-computer-says-no-why-airlines-wont-take-your-upgrade-money Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast NDC Servicing Gaps Order Management Systems A friend of Ann Cederhall's wanted to pay out of her own pocket to upgrade from economy to business. She opened the airline app at the airport. The system said no. Not "unavailable." Not "sold out." https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-96-human-error-why-ai-security-starts-with-the-human-not-the-model https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-96-human-error-why-ai-security-starts-with-the-human-not-the-model Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Agent Security Deepfake Risk There's a moment in this week's episode that I keep thinking about. Yagub Rahimov, a founder who spends his days mapping enterprise AI vulnerabilities, described standing in a crowded airport… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-you-cant-vibe-code-a-tour-operator https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-you-cant-vibe-code-a-tour-operator Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Travel Tech Complexity AI Use Case Filter Most AI pitches in travel come from people who have never had to file a rooming list. Alex Ragin has. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-new-olive-what-glp-1-drugs-reveal-about-airline-efficiency-and https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-new-olive-what-glp-1-drugs-reveal-about-airline-efficiency-and Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Sustainable Materials Climate Tech I've wanted to get a genuine sustainability entrepreneur on this show for a while. Not someone pitching net zero commitments or SAF roadmaps, but someone who has spent twenty years in the trenches… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-vibe-booking-hotel-data-is-not-ai-ready-heres-why https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-vibe-booking-hotel-data-is-not-ai-ready-heres-why Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Hotel Distribution Data Normalization I've been wanting to dig into the data plumbing underneath travel distribution for a while. One of our previous episodes, about a fake hotel site that successfully captured real bookings and left… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-day-we-killed-the-date-picker https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-day-we-killed-the-date-picker Tue, 19 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Conversational Travel Search OTA Economics I've wanted to get a solo founder building an AI-native travel product onto the show for a while. Not a team with VC backing and a GDS contract; someone who spotted a structural problem in how travel… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-50-years-of-tech-debt-ai-enters-the-chat https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-50-years-of-tech-debt-ai-enters-the-chat Tue, 12 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airline Distribution NDC and GDS I've covered AI and legacy systems on this podcast before, but I'd never asked someone who actually lives inside the distribution layer to explain how it works, and why it's such a challenge. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-fix-the-data-first-a-contrarians-guide-to-ai-in-hospitality https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-fix-the-data-first-a-contrarians-guide-to-ai-in-hospitality Tue, 05 May 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Hotel Distribution Content Governance The most useful conversations in this industry happen off the main stage with people who've been inside the plumbing long enough to know where the real problems are buried. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-zero-days-superintelligence-and-the-collapse-of-software-assumptions https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-zero-days-superintelligence-and-the-collapse-of-software-assumptions Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Software Quality Cybersecurity Software development is entering a phase where the cost of generating code has collapsed, but the cost of verifying it has not. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-5-minute-build-that-breaks-traditional-travel-tech https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-5-minute-build-that-breaks-traditional-travel-tech Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Agentic AI Travel Distribution Building a functional travel booking system used to take years of engineering: integrating GDS systems, hotel APIs, pricing logic, and fulfillment layers across fragmented supply. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-whats-actually-stopping-air-taxis-from-taking-off https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-whats-actually-stopping-air-taxis-from-taking-off Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast BVLOS Operations Detect-and-Avoid The US is about to publish rules that let drones fly beyond line of sight routinely. Here's what that unlocks. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-real-reason-one-broken-machine-disrupts-an-entire-airport https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-real-reason-one-broken-machine-disrupts-an-entire-airport Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airport Security Operations Equipment Orchestration In this episode, Anne Marie Pellerin, former TSA innovation lead and co-founder of Curie Technologies, brings firsthand experience from designing checkpoint segmentation and advancing aviation… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-why-ai-is-slowing-down-experts-before-it-speeds-up-work-brooker-painter https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-why-ai-is-slowing-down-experts-before-it-speeds-up-work-brooker-painter Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Adoption Team Productivity In this episode, I sit down with Ian Painter, Oli Deakin, and Adrian McKenzie, who bring deep experience across aviation data platforms and enterprise engineering leadership. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-how-a-barcode-saved-1-5-billion-and-replaced-the-magnetic-stripe https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-how-a-barcode-saved-1-5-billion-and-replaced-the-magnetic-stripe Wed, 25 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Aviation Standards Barcode Technology In this episode, Eric Leopold draws on 15 years at IATA and his role in shaping standards such as barcode boarding passes, airline distribution APIs, and industry data models to explain how aviation… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-why-your-istanbul-airport-sandwich-costs-22-the-economics-behind-drop https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-why-your-istanbul-airport-sandwich-costs-22-the-economics-behind-drop Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airport Economics Non-Aeronautical Revenue In this episode, I sit down with Professor Achim Czerny of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a leading airport economics scholar and active contributor to major aviation research societies, to… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-airports-still-run-on-1980s-software-why-the-industry-is-moving-beyond https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-airports-still-run-on-1980s-software-why-the-industry-is-moving-beyond Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Airport Operations Legacy Systems Hot on the heels of Heathrow Airport’s decision to use AIRHART as its digital backbone and with the Passenger Terminal Expo in London next week, in this episode, I speak with Martin Bowman, Chief… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-telecom-to-aviation-playbook-for-scaling-airspace-systems https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-the-telecom-to-aviation-playbook-for-scaling-airspace-systems Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Drone Traffic Management UTM 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… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-is-ai-in-a-bubble-what-happens-when-hype-meets-regulation https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-is-ai-in-a-bubble-what-happens-when-hype-meets-regulation Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast AI Bubble Hype vs Reality In this episode, I’m joined once again by Ian Painter, Oli Deakin, and Adrian McKenzie for a technical roundtable to examine if the current AI cycle reflects financial overvaluation… https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-dude-wheres-my-car-the-hidden-cost-of-broken-indoor-navigation https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-dude-wheres-my-car-the-hidden-cost-of-broken-indoor-navigation Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Indoor Navigation Airport Wayfinding In this episode, I speak with Dustin Gimbel, co-founder of RouteMe, a company delivering video-based indoor navigation across airports, airlines, and healthcare systems. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-this-ex-pilot-is-building-ai-for-the-cockpit https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-this-ex-pilot-is-building-ai-for-the-cockpit Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Cockpit AI EFB Systems In this episode, I chat with Leo Kotil, founder and CEO of Overwatch AI, a former airline and business aviation pilot who’s now building AI systems for frontline aviation teams. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-beyond-line-of-sight-the-infrastructure-drones-need-to-fly https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-beyond-line-of-sight-the-infrastructure-drones-need-to-fly Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast BVLOS Drones Airspace Safety In this episode, I sit down with James Dunthorne, founder of Neuron Innovations and 4DSKY, and an all-round expert in drones, data, and aviation technology. https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-jevons-paradox-for-knowledge-work https://airsidelabs.com/blog/newsletter-jevons-paradox-for-knowledge-work Fri, 23 Jan 2026 09:00:00 GMT Alex Brooker Newsletter Podcast Jevons Paradox AI & Knowledge Work In this episode, I chat with Ian Painter, Oliver Deakin, and Adrian McKenzie, all of whom I had the pleasure of working with at Snowflake Software.