Aviation — a puzzle begun in 1992.

Final-year thesis at the Solvay Business School: the hub-and-spoke concept applied to Sabena and SAS. Summa cum laude, summary published in L'Écho. With colour blindness closing the door to becoming a pilot, I approached aviation from many other angles, every bit as interesting — starting with network strategy.

Entered through network, yield and the field — not through technology. The early years were about touchpoints with the business, not with systems: internships with a station manager at Brussels Airport and in the marketing department of a British airline; sales and key accounts at United Airlines; air purchasing contracts at a tour operator; and, at Sofreavia, three years of consulting for Eurocontrol — ATM strategy indicators and dashboards, European policy reports for transport ministers, a yield management demonstration software. The technical dimension only came later, in 2006, when a Saudi airline entrusted me with selecting and then implementing its reservation system.

Broad rather than deep, and deliberately so. Ground operations, sales, revenue management, processes, consulting, systems — at airlines, a tour operator, a consultancy and the European air traffic management organisation. That breadth is unusual, and I own it: it lets me speak to every department in its own language.

Three areas of real depth. The sector's IT — five airlines, five different reservation systems; yield management; information systems. These are the places where the zip closes most often: where a flight, a fare or an operation depends on a system that management doesn't see.

And aviation forgives nothing. Legacy, heterogeneous systems that can never be switched off; downtime costs immediately, and a flight cannot be made up later. Holding that standard where infrastructure is lacking is where this facet meets sovereignty.