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Aviation Festival in London Takes Off

The Aviation Festival landed in London in September and was a hit with attendees and exhibitors. Here’s our review.

This event recap was written by Ian Cumming, founder and CTO of Travel Massive. When he’s not on a airplane on his way to our next meetup, he’s most likely coding the next feature on our community platform (or at a bar).

In the spirit of the Aviation Festival, I arrived to London via two long-haul flights from Sydney (Sydney → Seoul → London), adjusted my clock by 12 hours, and headed to the show!

I was joined by Kevin O’Shaughnessy one of our Dublin co-leaders (and co-founder of CityHook) and Lydia Band from our Berlin chapter, and together we explored the exhibition and show.

Here’s our top highlights…

Women in Aviation Mixer

The Women in Aviation Mixer was co-hosted by Travel Massive and Women in Transport – and featured two inspirational women in Aviation – Bonny Simi, President of Jetblue Ventures and Chris Browne, COO of easyJet.

Bonny and Chris had incredibly inspiring stories to tell of their careers and leadership in the Aviation industry.

A special thanks to Haley Woods for sharing our livestream with her Girls Love Travel community of more than 600,000 women!

Posted by Ian Cumming on Thursday, 6 September 2018

 

Video Walkthrough of the show

We also filmed a short video walk-though with Kevin O’Shaughnessy – co-founder of CityHook who provided some commentary and talks with attendees.

Walkthrough of the #AviationFestival in London ✈️

Posted by Travel Massive on Friday, 7 September 2018

 

Key takeaways from Aviation Festival

Ian’s top three takeaways from the show:

  • Airlines are consuming more data than ever before about the customer purchase and experience. There is an arms race for data, AI, and predictive analysis to help airlines squeeze every last drop of optimisation out of their booking engines.
  • We need more women in Aviation! As illustrated by the Women in Aviation mixer talks by Bonni and Chris – there’s plenty of opportunities for women to be leaders and help shape the future of aviation.
  • Any new innovation in the Aviation industry must be robust due to the business-critical nature of airlines – deals with technology startups can take years to pull off. If you’re thinking of getting into this side of the industry, bring your patience and determination!

Lydia’s top three takeaways from the show:

  • The women in Aviation Mixer; really inspiring hearing those stories as there were so many men at the festival, on stage and at networking events, especially in C-positions.
  • Networking in general at the festival was fantastic (including the reception at Emirates Stadium, sponsored by Cartrawler), and meeting so many new faces as well as members from the Travel Massive Community.
  • Sustainability does not seem to be an important topic or trend discussed in aviation 😝. However that being said, airlines are razor focused on resource efficiency – which in itself contributes to sustainable travel.

Member shout outs

We met a number of members and friends from the Travel Massive community, including: Taru Aalto from WowWandersGalena Stavreva from SpareFare, Timothy O’Neil Dunne (from many things), Mark Lenahan (Dublin co-leader) from Travelport DigitalHenry Harteveldt, Amanda Campbell, Kevin May from Phocuswire, Kate Irwin from Skift, and Fenn Bailey from Volantio (Melbourne chapter co-founder), Brett Dyason and colleagues from Capetown-based Hepstar, and many more…

Photos

Here’s some photos from the show…

(This is Kevin’s favourite bus, sponsored by his favourite competitor…)

(Thanks to the team from Switchfly who invited us to their networking drinks on the opening day.)

See you again next year at Aviation Festival!


Connect with Terrapinn (Aviation Festival organizers) on Travel Massive to keep informed of upcoming events and news in Aviation.


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