Travel Tech Podcast

Alex Brooker
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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.

  1. 2d ago

    89% of Airline Carts Never Convert

    Airline checkout loses close to 9 out of 10 shoppers before they ever pay, and Kameron Bertine's fix isn't a redesign — it's an identity layer airlines were never built to have. Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, a startup building an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels modeled on Shopify's ShopPay. The conversation covers the origin of the problem in Kameron's own booking experience, why airline cart abandonment runs as high as 89%, how Movmo integrates with legacy PSS and NDC infrastructure without replacing it, and why Movmo is deliberately holding off on fully agentic booking despite having the technical capability today. What You'll Learn Cart abandonment: Airline booking abandonment runs around 89%, higher than e-commerce's roughly 70-79% and close to ferry bookings at the top of the range.Design pattern: Movmo is modeled directly on Shopify ShopPay and payment layers like Stripe Link and Klarna rather than inventing a new checkout behavior from scratch.Merchant of record: Airlines care most about retaining the merchant-of-record relationship, so Movmo is built as an identity and checkout layer that sits on top of existing systems rather than replacing them.Legacy infrastructure: Movmo is designed to work with whatever PSS, GDS, or NDC infrastructure an airline already runs, since rip-and-replace projects in this industry routinely stall for years.Agentic readiness: Movmo could technically ship agentic booking today, but is deliberately sequencing a two-to-three year rollout through express checkout and white-label products first to build traveler trust before letting AI agents transact directly.Sales reality: Enterprise airline sales cycles typically run 12 to 24 months, sometimes up to 36, which reframes a two-month first proposal as unusually fast progress.Industry priorities: Agentic or AI-driven booking reportedly sits under 5% on airline executives' list of priorities, well behind operations and other concerns.Conversion signal: ShopPay profiles reportedly convert roughly 50% better than guest checkout, a gap Movmo is betting will show up similarly in airline booking once identity persists across sessions. Time-Stamped Highlights (00:00) Cold open and episode introduction(02:05) The Ecuador-to-Spain booking that started it all(03:14) The ShopPay moment: the light bulb for Movmo(07:57) 89% cart abandonment and why it happens(11:01) What Movmo's early user research actually found(14:17) Inside the express checkout flow, explained(15:39) Designing the one-click booking experience(17:18) The escalator sales funnel at FTE/APEX Long Beach(21:52) Legacy rails: working with NDC, GDS, and PSS instead of replacing them(23:50) Layla, Gemini, and where agentic booking is really headed(31:18) Merchant of record, loyalty, and airline governance requirements(33:16) The commercial model and transaction-fee approach(36:58) Why Movmo won't launch full agentic booking yet(39:17) Biggest surprises: sales cycle length and a 35 NPS awardGuest bio Kameron Bertine is co-founder and CEO of Movmo, an identity and checkout layer for airlines and hotels designed to reduce cart abandonment and enable persistent traveler profiles across booking sessions. He came from a product design background with prior experience in ERP systems, and founded Movmo in June 2024 after his own frustrating international booking experience. Company: movmo.io | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kameron-bertine 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 the 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, and he also invests in early-stage technology ventures.

  2. Aug 12

    The Feedback You Don't Notice You're Getting

    Alex Brooker hands his own microphone to the two people who know him best and lets them ask the questions he never answers on his own show. Adrian McKenzie and Oli Deakin, Alex Brooker's former colleagues at Snowflake Software, take over hosting duties on the Travel Tech Podcast to interview Alex directly. The conversation moves through leadership philosophy, the book Alex is writing about his career before and during Snowflake Software, and the early-life habits, from door-to-door fossil sales to a career defining dressing down, that shaped how each of them works today. What You'll Learn Leadership: Being kind, not nice, means having the uncomfortable conversation instead of avoiding it.Feedback: The best feedback often doesn't register as feedback until you reflect on the conversation afterward.Trust: Giving honest feedback gets harder, not easier, with people you haven't worked with for long.Writing: Alex's book centers on the moment a founder's problems outgrow what one person can code alone.Strategy: Most technology leaders solve what's directly in front of them instead of planning three to five years ahead.Formation: Early hustle, from door-to-door sales to Christmas Day shifts, builds a lasting baseline for how someone works.Resilience: Harsh, accurate feedback early in a career can become the turning point that accelerates it.Risk: Leaving a large corporation trades procedural safety nets for closeness to every decision.Time-Stamped Highlights   (0:00) Introduction: turning the tables on Alex  (2:18) Lessons from moving out of corporate life  (2:50) Be kind, not nice  (8:17) The challenge of giving honest feedback to people you don't know well  (11:14) Alex's book project and its emotional core  (13:47) Ollie's hypothetical book: technology strategy        (15:50) Formative story: Alex's childhood fossil-selling hustle  (19:29) Ollie's turning point: the feedback that changed his career  (24:01) Adrian's formative story: dinner table debates and connecting people  (25:41) Threads between early formation and post-corporate strengths  (26:11) Being closer to the edge: solopreneurship vs. corporate safety  (29:02) Why corporate stability is more illusion than reality  (30:04) What's next: AI, small business leverage, and future chapters  (31:41) Closing thoughts and thanks Guest bios Adrian McKenzie helped transform and build Snowflake Software alongside Alex Brooker and Oli Deakin before moving into leadership and team performance work, built around the principle of being kind rather than nice. Oli Deakin was also part of the leadership team as CTO at Snowflake Software (in its second life) and now advises technology leaders on building longer term technology strategy, helping heads of tech and CTOs connect day to day decisions to a three to five year vision. About the Podcast The Travel Tech Podcast 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. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he also invests in early-stage technology ventures.

  3. Aug 3

    An Airline Is Just a Software Stack Nobody Finished Building

    PLAY Airlines went from zero to $350 million in revenue in three years, did nearly everything right by its former CEO's account, and still went bankrupt — because in aviation, fuel price doesn't care about your execution. Birgir Jónsson is the former CEO of PLAY Airlines, former deputy CEO of WOW air, former CEO of Iceland Express, and previously led a turnaround at Iceland's postal service. In this conversation he breaks down why aviation resists new talent, why airline technology is far less standardized than outsiders assume, and what actually happened when fuel prices upended PLAY's business model after the invasion of Ukraine. What You'll Learn Closed industry: Aviation is a tight-knit, self-referential community that makes it structurally hard for outside talent to break in and stay.Culture split: Airlines run two cultures at once — crew and office — with different metrics, incentives, and worldviews, which makes company-wide alignment unusually hard.Standardization gap: Selling an airline seat looks like a solved e-commerce problem from the outside, but every new airline has to build its distribution and inventory stack from scratch.Fuel exposure: A single input cost — fuel — can erase the value of near-perfect operational execution within weeks.Hub model risk: PLAY's Iceland-as-a-hub strategy between Europe and the US stopped working once new aircraft types and geopolitical shocks shifted capacity onto direct Atlantic routes.Manager gap: Fast-scaling companies routinely promote technical experts into management roles without training them for the different skillset leadership actually requires.AI reality check: AI's near-term value in aviation is internal — helping new hires and cross-functional teams make sense of complex, fragmented data — more than customer-facing booking automation.Founder takeaway: The durable money in aviation tech has historically gone to companies solving infrastructure problems, not to the airlines themselves. Time-Stamped Highlights  (00:00) Introduction: an airline CEO joins the show for the first time(01:17) Twenty years in and out of Icelandic aviation(02:36) The "outsider's perspective" and why aviation resists new blood(04:19) Crew vs. office: the divided culture inside every airline(08:15) Building PLAY out of WOW air's DNA, during the pandemic(10:56) Why an airline is really an unfinished software stack(14:07) Negotiating distribution deals in a "very old school" industry(18:16) Legacy vs. new: why a five-year-old airline already has legacy debt(19:50) PLAY's bankruptcy and the fuel price that broke the model(21:30) Private equity, EasyJet, and why aviation takes business personally(29:02) Why the Iceland hub strategy stopped working(35:38) Scaling from zero to $350 million: growing pains and manager training(46:57) Where AI actually helps in aviation today(53:46) Closing advice for founders building in travel tech Guest bio Birgir Jónsson is the former CEO of PLAY Airlines, where he led the Icelandic low-cost carrier from launch through rapid growth to roughly $350 million in annual revenue. He previously served as deputy CEO of WOW air, CEO of Iceland Express, and led a turnaround at Iceland's postal service, and has also worked in medical equipment and printing. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/biggijonsson/ 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 the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems in regulated environments. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and he invests in early-stage technology ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002/

  4. Jul 28

    Nobody Would Fund a Human for This

    Four founders who have never met each other all built the same tool for the same reason: a phone call that no human team could ever be funded to make. This is the first episode in a new series pulling together ideas that surfaced independently across separate conversations with founders and operators. Host Alex Brooker features Mike Putnam (Custom Travel Solutions / reconfirm.ai), Anne Marie Pellerin (airport operations and security), Yagub Rahimov (call center AI infrastructure), and Fred Bean (Hotel Port), each making the case for AI-driven phone calling from a different corner of the travel and aviation industry. What You'll Learn The reconfirmation gap: Roughly two in every hundred hotel reservations get lost between the booking channel and the property, and the traveler usually finds out at the front desk.Hotel switches and data loss: Distribution tools like travel gateways and hub systems make shopping easier for consumers but create more points where a confirmed booking can quietly disappear.Voice as an audit layer: In airport maintenance operations, AI-driven calls to service engineers can capture and structure information that would otherwise stay fragmented across frontline paper logs, call center software, IT systems, and vendor platforms.The data orchestration bottleneck: Predictive analytics in airport maintenance is blocked less by AI capability and more by the absence of one unified, high-quality data set across all the systems involved.The unit economics case: Processing a single call for transcription and analysis can cost 5 to 10 cents while saving an organization roughly $200 in support time, which is what makes the business case close on its own.Privacy-by-architecture: A gateway approach can anonymize call data before it reaches an LLM, using a single base URL swap rather than a full architectural rebuild.The human off-ramp requirement: Voice AI adoption depends on giving customers a fast, obvious route to a human when they don't want to talk to a machine.Text over voice, long-term: At least one founder in the space expects text and messaging channels to eventually overtake voice as the dominant interface for these interactions. Time-Stamped Highlights  (00:00) Introduction: a new series built from ideas raised independently(00:27) Framing the theme: AI phone calling as the through-line(01:10) The traveler's worst moment: a booking that isn't there at check-in(02:00) Mike Putnam on the hotel switch problem and lost reservations(03:22) Inside reconfirm.ai: how the reconfirmation call actually works(04:24) Why the labor cost alone rules out a human doing this job(04:36) Shifting to aviation: Anne Marie Pellerin on equipment failure at 2am(05:16) The failure engine: building a smarter picture of equipment breakdowns(06:09) The real blocker for predictive analytics: no unified data set(08:17) Yagub Rahimov on a call center processing hundreds of thousands of calls daily(10:05) The gateway approach: anonymizing data with a one-line code change(11:38) The cents-versus-hundreds math behind the ROI(13:00) Fred Bean makes the case against voice: the "are you a human" problem(13:16) Why a human off-ramp is non-negotiable for adoption(13:58) The case for text and messaging overtaking voice long-term(14:06) Closing: four founders, one convergent idea, and what's next in the seriesGuest bios Mike Putnam is the founder of Custom Travel Solutions and built reconfirm.ai, a service that uses AI-driven phone calls to verify hotel bookings directly with properties before guests arrive. Anne Marie Pellerin works in airport operations and security, where she has integrated AI into a failure engine that analyzes equipment breakdowns and automates service-engineer notification calls. Yagub Rahimov works with call center infrastructure at scale, building gateway-based AI systems that anonymize customer data before it reaches a language model for processing. Fred Bean is the founder of Hotel Port and offers a counterpoint on voice AI adoption, arguing that human off-ramps and text-based channels will ultimately matter more than voice alone. 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 the 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. He previously built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and now invests in early-stage technology ventures while advocating for thoughtful, real-world AI deployment.

  5. Jul 22

    Fly First, Regulate Later: Why Europe's Rules Are Pushing Drones Abroad

    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 bioJulie 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 PodcastThe 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 bioAlex 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

  6. Jul 8

    The Real AI Bottleneck in Travel Content Is Copyright, Not Hallucination

    Everyone's worried about AI hallucinating travel content. Íñigo Valenzuela says the real problem is that you can't get sued for a hallucination, but you can get fined for a photo. Íñigo Valenzuela is the founder of Smartvel, a travel content and traveler-support data company working with airlines, cruise lines, and OTAs including Iberia, Delta, and MSC. The conversation covers Smartvel's pivot from destination content to COVID travel restriction tracking, the operational complexity of cruise line documentation requirements, and why AI-generated content struggles with image licensing and the long tail. What You'll Learn COVID pivot: Smartvel repurposed its museum-event web-crawling technology to track changing COVID travel restrictions in near real time for airlines like Iberia and Delta.Cruise complexity: Vaccination and visa requirements on a cruise can depend on the order of ports visited, not just the destinations themselves.Information design: Smartvel's product philosophy is to show travelers only the rules that apply to their specific nationality, age, and itinerary, not the full rule set.AI competition: Valenzuela argues destination content for individual queries is now free and unwinnable, so Smartvel focuses upstream on inspiration and conversion instead.Token economics: Heavily subsidized AI token costs are a temporary condition, and pricing normalization could reshape which AI travel products remain viable.Image licensing: AI-generated destination images can't be used commercially without IP rights, and AI-generated images are unreliable for anywhere that isn't a famous landmark.Market structure: New AI-native travel apps face a distribution problem, since building the product is now nearly free but earning customer awareness against Booking or Expedia isn't.Dynamic pricing: Valenzuela expects personalized pricing based on inferred willingness-to-pay to become more common and views it as a real risk to price transparency for travelers. Time-Stamped Highlights  01:16 - How Íñigo got into travel as a coach-business trainee03:26 - Smartvel's original idea: monetizing destination event content05:18 - The COVID pivot and the call from Iberia07:46 - Scaling from 5 destinations to Delta, United, and Ryanair13:19 - Why cruise vaccination rules depend on port order19:12 - Inside the customer journey: white-labeling for cruise lines21:32 - The travel pets problem and per-airline, per-breed rules26:03 - AI itinerary planners vs. Smartvel's upper-funnel positioning30:30 - Why long tail content only works for big travel brands35:57 - TikTok, Instagram, and the unsolved influencer-to-booking gap40:53 - Why trip planners for end users won't succeed48:20 - Airport apps: which ones are actually indispensable55:50 - The picture licensing problem, explained simply58:07 - The future of bundled travel and personalized pricing risk Guest bio Íñigo Valenzuela is the founder of Smartvel, a travel content and traveler-support platform serving airlines, airports, cruise lines, and OTAs worldwide. He previously held C-level roles in the coach, travel agency, and business travel industries before founding Smartvel 13 years ago. Company: https://www.smartvel.com/ | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inigovalenzuela/ 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. Host bio Alex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business applying aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. He previously built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains, and now invests in early-stage technology ventures.

  7. Jun 30

    Travel Inspiration Lives on TikTok. The Booking Still Lives in 47 Browser Tabs.

    Every billion pieces of travel content on TikTok and Instagram ends in a dead end. Boop is building the call to action that has been missing the whole time. Nancy Li Smith is the CEO and founder of Boop, a social travel platform that lets users generate bookable itineraries from their camera roll and share them with friends who can copy, personalize, and book from them directly. This conversation covers how Boop uses on-device AI to extract trip data from photo metadata, how a 50/50 affiliate commission split rewards itinerary creators, and why Nancy believes trust between real people will consistently outperform AI-generated recommendations built on anonymous internet data.What You'll Learn Social discovery vs. booking infrastructure: 89% of Gen Z travelers already discover destinations on TikTok and Instagram, but the transaction layer remains a disconnected, multi-tab booking experience that captures intent far too late.On-device AI for privacy: Boop processes photo metadata locally on the user's device, extracting location and trip structure without uploading the camera roll to external servers.The trust graph as a product moat: An AI recommendation grounded in a real friend's verified experience consistently outperforms a general-purpose LLM recommendation because it eliminates the need for the user to evaluate the source.Creator commission mechanics: Boop generates affiliate links automatically across hotel, experience, and activity providers, splitting commissions 50/50 between the platform and the original itinerary creator.Long tail outperforms celebrity: The most-copied trips on Boop are not from large influencers. A Chicago-based flight attendant's eight-day Japan itinerary and an Amsterdam local's guide during the Beyonce tour both outperformed influencer-produced content.The experience economy gap: 80% of experience providers globally are not bookable online. The activity market captures only around 20% of actual experience bookings, and Boop sees that as a primary expansion surface.Frequency signal from data: 50% of trips booked through Boop are four days or fewer, suggesting the platform is activating weekend and micro-trip behavior rather than just annual vacation planning.Network formation without explicit tools: Without building dedicated group-coordination features, Boop already sees users naturally sharing itineraries into WhatsApp groups for pre-trip alignment before anyone books a flight.Time-Stamped Highlights (00:00) Introduction and sponsor(00:32) Nancy's background: Meta Ray-Ban glasses, augmented reality, and the path to travel(02:37) The Venice honeymoon moment that sparked Boop(04:51) Live demo: turning a camera roll into a bookable itinerary(07:55) The BootBesties creator network and the 50/50 commission model(10:44) Balancing influencer reach with the long tail of authentic local trips(13:24) Privacy architecture and on-device AI(17:12) How Boop's AI agent uses the social trust graph versus generic LLMs(21:22) Agentic universal cart: booking hotels, experiences, and niche local providers in one transaction(23:46) The shift from search to social in travel distribution(27:00) Brand strategy: Heineken, sports clubs, and fan-generated itinerary libraries(36:01) Growth metrics: 50% week-over-week growth, doubling users every two weeks(48:49) Founding advice and the community-first approach to building a startup Guest bio Nancy Li Smith is the CEO and founder of Boop, a social travel platform based in Seattle. She previously led the AI platform behind the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, held CPO roles in enterprise AI, and ran global perception AI and augmented reality partnerships at Microsoft. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nancyliseattle | Company: boopwithme.com About the PodcastThe Travel Tech Podcast 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. Host bioAlex Brooker is the founder of Airside Labs, an AI business that applies aviation-grade testing and compliance rigor to enterprise AI systems. Before founding Airside Labs, Alex built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains. He also invests in early-stage technology ventures and advocates for disciplined, real-world AI deployment. LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002

  8. Jun 22

    Computer Says No: Why Airlines Won't Take Your Upgrade Money

    Airlines have been trying to modernize their retailing for over a decade, and most still can't change or refund what they sell. Ann Cederhall is co-founder of LeapShift and one of the architects of the original NDC Direct Connect implementations at Lufthansa, where she helped build the project that became known as the "16 Euros" surcharge. In this episode, she traces the structural reasons why airline retailing has stalled: from the servicing gaps baked into NDC standards through version 24.1, to the 70% of airlines operating without any order management system, to the $650 million to $3 billion in annual revenue leakage from interline proration disputes. The conversation covers what AI can realistically fix and what it cannot. What You'll Learn NDC servicing gap: Airlines could book via NDC from 2012 but could not change, cancel, or refund those bookings until the 24.1 standard in 2024, a 12-year gap that fundamentally limited what airlines could sell through the channel.Version fragmentation: Approximately 70% of airlines currently on NDC are still running version 17.1, leaving them without the servicing capabilities that would make the standard commercially viable.Order management absence: Nearly 70% of airlines surveyed have no orchestration or order management system, meaning they have no centralized control over what they have sold, to whom, and what can be changed.Ancillary inventory failure: Airlines routinely sell ancillary services (seat upgrades, fast track, bags) with no system to verify that those services actually exist at the time and place of purchase.Upgrade opportunity cost: Willingness to pay increases sharply close to departure and at the airport, but most airlines' systems cannot process an upgrade when the booking is held in a travel seller's PNR rather than the airline's own record.AI's real limits in retailing: Agentic AI can filter and interpret shopping results, but it cannot replace shopping engines that have not been modernized in 30 years and still process 20 million fares to surface a handful of relevant options.Revenue management transformation: AI agents can harvest competitor cancellation rates, demand signals, and real-time market data overnight and present a synthesized briefing. That is a significant shift from traditional RM systems built on historical averages.Revenue leakage scale: Global interline revenue leakage runs between $650 million and $3 billion annually, driven by inaccurate proration calculations, uncollected taxes, missing ancillary settlements, and unsettled ticket coupons. Many of these disputes cost more to resolve than the amounts in question. Time-Stamped Highlights (00:00) Introduction and Ann's background in travel(01:19) First airline role at Spantax, then Amex, Amadeus, and SAS(04:03) Arriving at Lufthansa in 2014 and the beginning of NDC(05:15) The "16 Euros" surcharge: what it was and why it caused shock(11:02) Why NDC fell short: no servicing, no ecosystem, GDS recapture(19:03) The order management gap: 70% of airlines with no orchestration(24:32) Ancillary failures: selling services that don't exist(30:33) Upgrade economics and the travel wallet effect(36:00) Why auctions and seat upgrades require caution on premium routes(42:04) What AI can and cannot do in airline retailing(49:35) Revenue management: from sky gods and Excel to overnight AI agents(55:12) Where AI genuinely helps: documentation, process archaeology, long-tail demand(01:01:00) The shopping engine problem: 30 years without modernization(01:06:00) Revenue leakage: $3 billion in interline proration disputes explained Guest bio Ann Cederhall is co-founder of LeapShift, a consultancy focused on airline retailing, distribution, and commercial strategy. She has held senior roles at Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Amadeus, and ATPCo, and was involved in the original NDC Direct Connect implementation at Lufthansa in 2015. She is the author of the State of Airline Retailing 2026 report. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anncederhall/ Company: https://leapshift.com/ 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. Before founding Airside Labs, he built and scaled complex software in aviation and safety-critical domains. He also invests in early-stage technology ventures. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brooker-2280002/

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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Brooker
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Alex Brooker
  • Show Website
    Travel Tech Podcast

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