The Diggintravel Podcast

In the second episode of our Airline Digital Innovation Series, we continue exploring digital twins for airlines and airports. But this time, we move from the big idea to a much more practical question:

How do you actually build one?

After our first conversation about digital twins, I received several versions of the same feedback. The concept sounds exciting, but creating a realistic digital version of an airport must require a huge amount of data, complex integrations and a long technology project.

My guest, Sebastian Huch, CTO of Autonoma, explains why this does not necessarily need to be the case.

Sebastian comes from an academic, data science and engineering background. Before building digital twins for aviation, he worked with autonomous vehicles and was part of the team that won the first Indy Autonomous Challenge.

In our conversation, Sebastian explains how an initial digital-twin proof of concept can be built in only a couple of weeks using publicly available data. From there, airlines and airports can gradually connect their own operational systems, add more data sources and develop the pilot into a more realistic, dynamic and predictive operational model.

We also explore two very different examples. At Augusta Regional Airport, digital twins help teams prepare for the huge and unpredictable traffic surge during Masters week. At the other end of the scale, Autonoma independently modelled Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to test whether its approach could scale to the world’s busiest passenger airport.

Finally, we look further into the future and discuss how AI agents could continuously monitor conditions, recognize emerging problems, create simulations and test possible responses before an operator even asks.

Throughout the conversation, one principle remains important: digital twins and AI should expand what experienced operational teams can see and test, while the final decision stays with the human.

RESOURCES:

Read the companion article explaining how airlines and airports can build their first digital-twin pilot, add operational data and gradually develop it into a live predictive model:

https://diggintravel.com/build-digital-twins-airlines-airports/

In this episode, we launch our new Airline Digital Innovation Series, where we’ll bring new concepts, technologies and ideas to our audience through conversations with people who are developing and applying them across the airline industry.

We start with digital twins and my guest Will Bryan, CEO of Autonoma, a company built around data science, simulation and innovation.

Before bringing this technology to aviation, Will worked in the high-speed world of autonomous vehicles and driverless racing, including the Indy Autonomous Challenge. Now, he is applying what he learned there to the complex physical world of airline and airport operations.

For years at Diggintravel, we’ve talked about experimentation, scientific decision-making and de-risking ideas.

Digital twins take those principles beyond websites and digital channels. They give airlines and airports a way to simulate real operations, explore possible scenarios and test decisions before introducing them into the live environment.

What if an airport could see the consequences of an operational decision before making it? What if an airline could simulate different responses to a disruption before it happens? And what if experienced teams could safely test ideas that would otherwise be too risky or expensive to try?

Put simply, digital twins could allow airlines and airports to see and test the future before it happens.

In our conversation, Will explains what digital twins really are, why they are more than attractive 3D visualizations, how they are already being applied in aviation and where this technology could take airlines and airports next.

In the following episode, we’ll move from the concept to the practical details and explore what it takes to build a digital twin in the real airline and airport world.

RESOURCES:

Read the companion article with key digital-twin concepts, aviation use cases and highlights from this episode:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-digital-twins/

In the fourth and final episode of the How Airlines Become Data Driven series, we move from analysing relationships to one of the most difficult questions in airline marketing: does marketing actually generate additional demand and bookings?

Traditional attribution can show which marketing channel received credit for a conversion. But it cannot necessarily tell us whether that booking happened because of the campaign or whether the customer would have booked anyway.

In this episode, I share a practical six-step framework for moving beyond attribution and correlation towards measuring the incremental impact of airline marketing.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why airline digital teams rarely reach the incrementality stage

The difference between attribution, correlation and causation

How to define the business outcome or key metric you want to influence

Why airline teams need trusted, connected data before attempting advanced measurement

How external factors such as capacity, pricing, seasonality and competitor activity can influence results

Why clear hypotheses are the starting point for meaningful analysis

How existing or deliberately created variability makes marketing impact measurable

How correlation, regression analysis and experimentation can help teams test their assumptions

How market matching, causal-impact analysis and GeoLift tests can estimate incremental lift

Where Marketing Mix Modeling fits into the measurement toolkit

Why collaboration between airline marketing teams and data scientists is critical

Why marketing leaders must be willing to challenge previous decisions, learn and adjust future investments

The episode is accompanied by a companion article featuring a visual six-step framework and five practical examples from airline consulting projects. These examples illustrate how airline teams can explore relationships between advertising and bookings, develop hypotheses, create test periods, compare treatment and control markets, and estimate incremental impact using different data science methods.

Explaining all the technical details behind these methods is beyond the scope of one podcast. Instead, the episode focuses on the practical questions airline marketing and analytics teams need to ask, the conditions required for meaningful measurement, and the importance of building a bridge between business experts and data scientists.

Whether you are evaluating an individual campaign, questioning the value of paid brand search, measuring the impact of brand advertising, or deciding how to allocate your marketing budget, the central question is the same: did your marketing create additional demand and bookings, or would they have happened anyway?

RESOURCES:

Read the companion article with the six-step framework, practical airline marketing analytics examples, charts, experiments and key takeaways from this episode:

https://diggintravel.com/does-airline-marketing-drive-more-bookings/

In the third episode of the How Airlines Become Data Driven series, we move from measurement to analysis and explore one of the most valuable habits I've developed during five years of consulting with airline ecommerce and digital marketing teams.

Rather than starting with individual reports, campaigns, or marketing channels, I explain why airline teams should first consolidate their data, build a joined view of performance, and analyse it from the top down.

This simple six-step framework has become the foundation of almost every airline analytics and reporting project I've worked on.

In this episode, we talk about:

This episode is accompanied by a comprehensive companion article featuring 10 real-world reporting examples, dashboards, charts, and visualizations from airline consulting projects. The article expands on the framework discussed in the podcast and demonstrates how it can be applied to bookings, web traffic, flight searches, Google Ads, campaign segmentation, market analysis, airline capacity data, competitor benchmarking, and more.

Whether you're building weekly performance reports, evaluating marketing campaigns, or trying to create a more data-driven airline organization, the principles are the same: start with the big picture, connect your data, and only then drill into the details that matter.

RESOURCES:

Read the companion article with 10 practical airline analytics examples, reporting dashboards, charts, and key takeaways from this episode:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-data-connecting-the-dots/

In the second episode of the How Airlines Become Data Driven series, we move from the big picture to the first practical step of building a more data-driven airline ecommerce and digital marketing team.

In my experience, every airline analytics project starts in the same place: understanding how accurate your digital data really is.

Before optimizing campaigns, running experiments, evaluating the impact of digital spend, or making strategic marketing decisions, you need to know whether you can trust the data you're looking at.

Drawing on five years of hands-on consulting with airline ecommerce and digital marketing teams, I explain why measuring data accuracy and tracking discrepancies between digital analytics platforms and backend systems should become one of the first habits every airline digital team builds.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why data accuracy is the foundation of every analytics and optimization project

Why many airline teams don't know how accurate their digital analytics data really is

How digital measurement has changed with GA4, privacy regulations, consent management, browser restrictions, and server-side tracking

Why there is no single "correct" analytics architecture for every airline

Why measuring tracking discrepancy is more important than chasing perfect tracking

Practical approaches to measuring discrepancies between GA4, server-side tracking, and backend systems

Why regular discrepancy tracking should become one of the first habits every airline digital team builds

How to investigate discrepancies by segmenting data across countries, devices, browsers, and customer groups

A real-world example of identifying a major tracking issue following a GA3 to GA4 migration

Whether you use GA4, Adobe Analytics, server-side tracking, or a custom analytics platform, the principles are the same: understand the limitations of your measurement, validate it against a trusted source of truth, and build confidence in your data before making important business decisions.

RESOURCES:

Full article with practical examples, charts, and key takeaways from this episode:

https://diggintravel.com/why-airline-digital-tracking-is-never-perfect/

After a six-month break, the Diggintravel Podcast is back with the start of a new series: How Airlines Become Data Driven.

Over the last five years, alongside hosting more than 70 conversations with airline leaders, digital executives, UX experts, and industry practitioners, I have also spent much of my time working directly with airline ecommerce and digital marketing teams.

These projects ranged from helping airlines improve digital measurement and analytics foundations, to building joined views of marketing and ecommerce performance, to more advanced experimentation and data science initiatives designed to better understand what actually drives airline business results.

In this first episode of the series, I share some of the biggest lessons and observations from those consulting engagements and explain why becoming data driven is often much harder than it looks.

In this episode, we talk about:

This episode serves as an introduction to the broader How Airlines Become Data Driven series and lays the foundation for the topics we'll explore in future episodes, including measurement, analytics, experimentation, organizational learning, and AI-driven change.

If you're involved in airline ecommerce, digital marketing, analytics, data science, or digital transformation, this episode provides a practical perspective on what it really takes to build a more data-driven organization.

This episode closes out the 2025 Diggintravel Podcast season with a deep dive into one of the topics that kept coming up in our Airline Leaders Series conversations: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

After a year of interviews with airline CMOs, CDOs, and digital leaders in partnership with 815Labs, we wanted to switch gears and dig into a very specific subject that sits high on many airline agendas and that many of you asked us to explore in more detail.

For this episode, I traveled to Budapest to sit down with David Minorics, Business Development Director at Mito Performance. Through Mito’s airline-focused branch 815Labs, David has worked on numerous airline digital marketing and SEO projects and is now leading GEO pilots and initiatives for airlines and other travel brands.

In this episode, we talk about:

What Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is and how it differs from traditional SEO

Why GEO is about being recommended by AI, not just being found

How AI-powered search synthesizes information and what query fan-out means in practice

The key elements of the GEO playbook for airlines

How airlines can benchmark GEO visibility and sentiment

What GEO metrics and KPIs actually matter

How airline marketing teams can start GEO pilot projects

Early learnings from GEO pilots, including projects with airlines

This episode is a practical, no-hype conversation about how AI-powered search is changing airline visibility, marketing, and digital strategy. David shares hands-on insights that make this a must-listen for airline marketers, digital teams, and anyone responsible for airline distribution and brand presence.

RESOURCES:

This is the fifth episode of our 2025 Airline Leaders Series, brought to you in partnership with 815Labs!

For this episode, we traveled to Lisbon during the World Aviation Festival to meet with Jason Ward, Vice President of Marketing and People at Azul Airlines.

In this episode, we talk about:

How Jason’s journey across Morris Air, Southwest, JetBlue, TAP Portugal, and Azul shaped his people-first leadership style

Why empathy and culture are the foundations of brand loyalty

The OPA (Observe, Perceive, Attend) model and how it drives great service at Azul

How technology and AI can enhance, not replace, the human touch

Azul’s community-driven purpose and a breakdown of their special “O Céu do Brasil é Azul” (“The Sky of Brazil is Blue”) campaign

Why curiosity and learning are still the most important skills for the future of airline leadership

This episode offers a refreshing perspective on leadership, culture, and airline customer experience from one of the industry’s most experienced voices.

RESOURCES:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-leaders-jason-ward-azul-airlines/

This is the fourth episode of our 2025 Airline Leaders Series, brought to you in partnership with 815Labs!

In this series, we speak with top airline digital and ecommerce leaders to uncover how they drive growth, optimize digital performance, and build smarter strategies for the future.

For this episode, we traveled to Lisbon during the World Aviation Festival to meet with Juliana Ramirez, Chief Digital Officer at Flair Airlines.

In this episode, we talk about:

Building a “team of builders” and creating a culture of ownership

Balancing startup agility with corporate focus

The Flair FWD initiative and using digital products to rebuild customer trust

How guarantees like On-Time, Checked Bag, Travel Flex, and Disruption remove friction and build brand trust

The value of direct customer feedback through Flair’s Feedback Forums

Why curiosity and learning are the key skills for digital professionals in the age of AI

This episode is packed with insights on leadership, digital transformation, and culture for airline digital, product, and marketing professionals who want to learn how to move fast while building trust.

RESOURCES:

https://diggintravel.com/airline-leaders-juliana-ramirez-flair-airlines/

This is the third episode of our 2025 Airline Leaders Series, brought to you in partnership with 815Labs!

In this series, we speak with top airline digital and ecommerce leaders to uncover how they drive growth, optimize digital performance, and build smarter strategies for the future.

For this episode, we traveled to Lisbon to meet with Sara Walter de Freitas, Head of Digital & eCommerce at TAP Air Portugal.

In this episode, we talk about:

Sara’s unique journey—from a marketing intern at TAP to leading its digital transformation

The 3-year transformation model: Assess – Fix – Accelerate

Why cultural change is harder (and more important) than tech upgrades

How consistency, trust, and resilience shape better airline digital experiences

The role of experimentation, data, and collaboration in driving smarter decisions

This episode is full of actionable insights for airline digital, UX, product, and ecommerce professionals navigating complex transformation and customer experience challenges.

RESOURCES: