The commercial aviation industry has become much more adept in a changing operational environment at ensuring public confidence, but faces ongoing communications challenges, IATA DG and CEO Tony Tyler told the IATA Ops Conference in Copenhagen.
Although the Ops Conference is a technical gathering, "the success of many of our challenges are as dependent upon effective communications as they are on technical expertise," Tyler said in an April 18 speech.
This is particularly the case during a crisis, Tyler said: "In a world of instant social communication we need to be a part of the discussion, even when we don"™t have all of the answers. It is a mindset that must pervade the value chain. I believe that we still have much scope to lift our game through sharing experiences."
However, he also argued that the industry"™s willingness and ability to communicate is critical to achieving important policy changes. "There is no question that we are adept at talking to each other and making our views known on the technical ins and outs of things like Performance-Based Navigation, and Required Navigation Performance," Tyler said.
But, he added, "We"™ve been less successful in advocating with politicians whose constituents may be affected as flights are concentrated in tighter corridors into and out of airports and who ultimately control the purse strings for essential infrastructure investments and structural changes."
Tyler said he saw "numerous opportunities for stakeholders to communicate more effectively on developments that are vital to enabling aviation to support economic growth and job creation." These included infrastructure and regulation, he said.
On infrastructure, Tyler pointed out that the number of air travelers is expected to reach seven billion a year by 2034, a figure he said that could only be accommodated if adequate infrastructure was put in place in the interim.
"Yet progress is lagging in many parts of the world," he said. "We have found the technical answers to delivering greater efficiency and safety with big change programs like the Single European Sky and [FAA"™s] NextGen. But we have not been able to muster the political will or funding to achieve either in a meaningful timeframe»…
