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.
Julie 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.
What You'll Learn
- Career 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 representation stalled: Female representation across pilots, air traffic controllers, and maintenance sits around 5%, with maintenance specifically closer to 2-2.5%, despite lower technical barriers to entry than in the past.
- Boeing versus Airbus as a cautionary tale: Slower, more conservative adoption of forward-looking technology is framed as a contributing factor in Boeing's more difficult recent stretch relative to Airbus.
Time-Stamped Highlights
- (00:00) Cold open and guest introductions
- (02:59) Origin stories: how Julie and Sarah each got into aviation
- (08:22) The last ten days: a week in the life of a drone regulator and an industry chair
- (10:13) Interviewing Willie Walsh and the Aviation Club dinner
- (12:55) Ireland's outsized role in global aircraft leasing
- (16:06) Career challenges: being a female apprentice on the hangar floor in the 1990s
- (19:10) Mentors who shaped each guest's path
- (28:51) Imposter syndrome, hesitancy, and why women apply for roles differently than men
- (36:09) The stalled numbers: gender statistics across pilots, ATC, and maintenance
- (38:09) Apprenticeship snobbery and the skills pipeline problem
- (42:52) Tech culture versus aviation culture on diversity enforcement
- (46:29) The future is already here: multimodal transport, drone deliveries, and the "three Ds"
- (52:55) AI in practice: OptiFlight, turnaround optimization, and the data-sharing problem
- (54:40) Regulate-then-operate versus operate-then-regulate: Europe vs the US and China
- (1:06:00) Building a just culture and mandated reporting in the drone industry
- (1:09:37) Closing advice for young people considering an aviation career
Guest bio
Julie Garland is CEO of Avtrain, Europe's leading drone training and certification body, and president of the Joint European Drone Associations. She began her career as an aircraft maintenance engineer with Aer Lingus, went on to fly as a commercial captain and type-rating instructor, and later qualified as a barrister specializing in aviation law before moving into drone regulation. She also serves on the JARUS industry stakeholder group. Company: avtrain.aero · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julie-garland-87925b25
Sarah Owen is VP for Europe Travel and Transportation at Sutherland, chairs the Aviation Club of the UK Forum, and sits on the Council of the Royal Aeronautical Society. She has held senior roles at Google, Salesforce, and Cyient, and led commercial strategy at Assaia, a computer vision company focused on aircraft turnaround. Company: sutherlandglobal.com · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarah-owen-mraes-38b26b20 · Also referenced: aviationclub.org.uk
About the Podcast
The Travel Tech Podcast features long-form conversations with leaders across travel and technology, exploring how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses — with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role.
Host bio
Alex Brooker is founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems, helping organizations build and test AI agents in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002
What is Travel Tech Podcast?
The Travel Tech Podcast, hosted by Alex Brooker, features long form conversations with leaders across travel and technology. The show explores how software, data, operations, and distribution come together in real businesses, with an emphasis on tradeoffs, incentives, and lessons that transfer beyond any single company or role. Alex Brooker is an industry veteran with experience in aviation, start up to exit, and AI transformation.