{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Travel Tech Podcast","title":"Airports Still Run on 1980s Software: Why the Industry Is Moving Beyond AODB-Centric Operations","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3205,"description":"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 Strategy Officer at Smarter Airports. Airport operations are still largely built on systems designed decades ago. Many of the technologies coordinating flights, gates, stands, and turnaround processes trace their lineage back to architectures conceived in the 1980s. They solved a critical problem at the time—distributing flight data across the airport ecosystem—but they were never designed for the integration depth, operational complexity, or rate of change airports face today.That gap is becoming harder to manage. Modern hubs operate close to capacity, depend on dozens of interconnected stakeholders, and need to respond to disruptions in real time. Yet many still rely on tightly scoped operational systems whose development cycles, data models, and vendor roadmaps reflect a much slower technological era.Martin Bowman argues the industry is approaching a structural shift. With Heathrow selecting the AIRHART platform to underpin core operations, the conversation moves beyond replacing legacy systems toward something more fundamental: building a configurable operational control layer that allows airports to orchestrate data, rules, integrations, and future automation—including AI—without waiting for vendor roadmaps to catch up.What You’ll LearnThe limits of the traditional AODB model: Airport Operations Databases were designed to distribute flight data efficiently, but their architecture and vendor delivery model have struggled to evolve alongside modern operational demands.Platform architecture as an alternative to point solutions: Instead of deploying fixed-function products like AODB, ACDM, and AOP separately, airports can configure reusable components around shared data, rules, and integrations.A shift in ownership of operational logic: In a platform model, the...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/LxpvuNpWwfSGFL1KA1WhoZf9L55ykAqb5rgjXNFqi3c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mY2Yz/ZjA5OGE1ZmEyMTk4/ODJkYmU1YjhlYjRk/YTMzNC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}