{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Travel Tech Podcast","title":"Fly First, Regulate Later: Why Europe's Rules Are Pushing Drones Abroad","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4519,"description":"Two women who've collectively worked nearly every job aviation has to offer sit down to explain why Europe keeps writing the rulebook before anyone's allowed to fly.\nJulie Garland, CEO of Avtrain and president of the Joint European Drone Associations, and Sarah Owen, VP for Europe Travel and Transportation at Sutherland and chair of the Aviation Club of the UK, join host Alex Brooker for the podcast's first in-person recording, held in London. The conversation covers unconventional career paths through aviation, the regulatory gap between Europe and the US/China on drones and AI, the persistent gender imbalance across pilots, engineers, and the drone sector, and where AI is (and isn't yet) delivering results in flight operations.\nWhat You'll LearnCareer sequencing: Julie moved through roughly ten-year blocks in engineering, flying, and law before founding a drone training company, treating each stage as a deliberate step rather than a single fixed path.Regulatory sequencing: Europe tends to regulate a technology before it has been operated at scale, while the US and China let operators fly first and shape rules from what they learn.Drone scalability barriers: Missing planning, noise, and airspace-access frameworks — not the drones themselves — are why some European drone delivery operators are concentrating expansion in the US, UK, and UAE instead.AI in flight operations: Tools like OptiFlight already use AI to rebalance horizontal and vertical thrust during climb, cutting fuel burn by roughly 5-6% on that phase of flight.Data silos as the real bottleneck: Airports, ground handlers, and airlines often each hold separate slices of operational data, and commercial incentives actively work against sharing it.Safety reporting culture in drones: Unlike commercial aviation's decades-old just culture of non-punitive incident reporting, the drone industry is only now being pushed toward mandated reporting that would let it prove real safety performance.Gender...","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}