Landor is, possibly, the creative agency that has designed the most iconic brands in aviation. British Airways, Alitalia, Singapore Airlines and Etihad are just a few of the big names of the airline industry that have entrusted their public identity to Landor’s creative minds. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Ryan Frost, Executive Creative Director at Landor, about the attributes of a great airline brand and we dissect what and how three great British airlines that couldn’t be more different between them - British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and easyJet - have chosen to communicate th ..read more

Our guest in this episode is Billy Thalheimer, founder and CEO of REGENT Craft, a startup based in Rhode Island developing a wing-in-ground vehicle that will make it possible to fly fast and sustainably between coastal cities before the end of this decade. A wing-in-ground vehicle (WiG) is a type of craft that flies just a few meters above the surface of water making use of a draft-reducing aerodynamical effect. As a matter of fact, wing-in-ground vehicles are not new, the Soviets had a go at them during the Cold War, and some entrepreneurs have tried to make them work in the past. What’s new ..read more

Is the air cargo market ripe for its own technology revolution? Aleksey Matyushev and his team at Natilus are certainly doing their bit to make it happen. A graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Aleksey has been working at the cutting edge of aerospace technology for quite some time, both on civilian and military projects. He is the founder and CEO of Natilus, a Californian startup that is working on a family of truly disruptive blended-wing-body freigther aircraft that are also designed with autonomous flight capabilities and hydrogen propulsion in mind. A tall order, for sure. Bu ..read more

Charles Everett is the Director of Aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a public organization set up by these two states in order to manage key pieces of infrastructure, including the ports, some tunnels and roads and, importantly for this episode of the podcast, New York’s airport system. More than 144 million passengers pass every year through the airports under the responsibility of the Port Authority, which include JFK, La Guardia and Newark-Liberty, and this number is set to increase in coming years and the three of them complete massive redevelopment works. Over $30 ..read more

Eric Lithun is a successful software entrepreneur from Norway, who, after selling the company he had co-founded, focused his efforts on the development of an electric seaplane. Elfly is a startup developing a new generation battery-powered seaplane. Electric aviation is tough: energy density is not yet there for most use cases, but this is not the case, Eric thinks, of the many of the missions seaplanes operate nowadays. In areas like the Norwegian fjords or the Maldives, seaplanes can play an important role linking communities that, while not distant as the crow (or the seaplane!) flies, are ..read more

Giulio Ranucci is the Head of Innovation at Aeroporti di Roma (AdR), the company managing Rome’s two airports, Fiumicino (FCO) and Ciampino (CIA), with nearly 50 million annual passengers combined. What makes Giulio’s work at the helm of AdR’s innovation arm particularly interesting, is the very active role that the Italian airport operator is playing in fostering technology innovation in the airport sector. The initiatives taken by AdR go well beyond Rome and Italy. Its annual startup accelerator programme is open to startups from all over the world and Aeroporti di Roma has also been instrum ..read more

Richard Gaona is one of the key players in the global executive aviation industry. The once president of Airbus’ Executive Aircraft division is currently leading one of the most unique operators in the highly sophisticated world of private aviation. Richard is the President and CEO of Comlux, a company like no other. The uniqueness of Comlux is not due to the fact that it operates at the highest end of a market. No, even if its fleet includes some of the world’s largest and most luxurious private jets and its customer list, some of the world’s most successful businessmen, artists, sportsmen, h ..read more

Mark Hiller is the CEO of RECARO Holding and RECARO Aircraft Seating. Germany-based RECARO is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of aircraft seats. Although RECARO is present in, pretty much all segments of the market, its position is particularly strong in low cost and hybrid airlines, where it gets close to a third of the market worldwide. Yes, you read that right!…roughly one of every three seats in this segment of the airline industry are made by this family-owned company headquartered in the picturesque town of Schwäbisch-Hall the southwest of Germany! (although not all seats are m ..read more

Jay Sorensen is one of the world’s top experts in airline ancillaries. Every year, Jay’s firm, Ideaworks Company, produces a comprehensive report about the state of airline ancillaries, a piece of work that has become the reference in this field, the Yearbook of Ancillary Revenue. As someone that tried to read Ideawork’s ancillaries yearbook as soon as it comes out, I was keen to have Jay on the podcast to talk about this very important component of many airlines’ business model. What are the ancillaries that are driving the most revenue? Which ancillaries are now focusing the attention of th ..read more

The seaplane industry could not remain off trend. Electrification is driving a wave of innovation in aviation and George Alafinov, the scion of a family of seaplane designers, is making sure it does not skip one of the oldest branches of the industry. True, seaplanes may have fallen out of fashion in the post-war years. The advent of the jet era, the availability of airports on land and the maintenance requirements of aircraft operating in salty water led to this category of aircraft being sidelined. But Jekta’s founder is taking a new approach, using composites and electric propulsion to crea ..read more