By Arpad Szakal* The aviation industry is increasingly recognizing the value of diversity and inclusion in driving success. Private equity firms involved in the sector have a unique opportunity to lead the way by implementing actionable strategies that attract and retain diverse talent. Below are some practical steps for PE firms in the aviation industry to foster a culture of diversity & inclusion.  Connect with the Broader Talent Pool: Break free from traditional networks and actively seek diverse candidates. Explore similar companies, industry publications, and influential speakers to identify talent from various backgrounds. Consider partnering with diversity-focused search firms or organizations to expand your candidate pool effectively. Tap into Adjacent Industries: Think beyond the confines of the aviation industry. Look [...]

By Marianela Cartagena* Albert Einstein wrote: “In crisis times the imagination is above knowledge”1. As creativity requires dedication, skills, methodology and self-confidence2. In the case of resourcefulness, we have to add other behavior´s skills like frustration tolerance, perseverance, flexibility, being proactive, assertiveness, persuasion, credibility, compromise, enthusiasm, and a plus of some omnipresent virtues like wisdom and knowledge, courage and temperance. The resourceful leader receives nourishment of creative teams that brings to a kind of investigation/action, to combine ideas in an instant manner, in a chaos moment and to make precise decisions, to get successful of that moment or other situations in the future. Creativity and resourcefulness have in common that both breaks the pattern that: rules the brain activity of [...]

By Arpad Szakal* The days of a lifetime career with a single company are long gone in most parts of the world. Although more frequent job changes have become the norm in certain areas, they are still challenging times for those individuals making a career pivot, whether a result of their own choice or especially in the case of a job loss. Career transitions are complex and they are not just about doing something different professionally. A career transition is a lifestyle redesign that often entails rethinking how you want to feel at the end of the work day, how you want to spend your time, and how this relates to your longer term objectives. If you're a mid-career aviation [...]

By Keith Dugas* As technology becomes increasingly integral to the way we work, it also becomes important that the various technologies in a business communicate with each other and work with the same information. This article is about Air Canada’s evolution from paper to digital as part of our overall strategy to ensure that all devices are well managed and synchronized. Overview Air Canada is the largest airline in Canada by fleet size and passengers carried. Keeping aircraft in optimal condition is a critical part of everyday operations. For that, the Maintenance team must optimize aircraft maintenance procedures to ensure security and meet regulatory requirements while minimizing turnaround time between flights to limit the costs of having an aircraft grounded. [...]

By Exequiel Sanhueza Yáñez* Although a lot has been written in recent years about climate change, I can point out that this concept refers to the variation of the climate on earth due, mainly, to the action of human beings who, since the revolution in agriculture, have destroyed their own habitat by burning of forests and other phenomena of an industrial, agricultural and land, air and maritime transport nature. All of this has implied the use of non-renewable resources, annually the release of millions of tons of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. The consequence of this is the heat that is trapped in the Earth's atmosphere, producing a greenhouse effect that leads to global warming. It is good to [...]

By Jose Ricardo Botelho, CEO of ALTA We begin a new year reaffirming ALTA's strong mission to represent the voice of the aviation industry in Latin America and the Caribbean and to build bridges of collaboration within the industry and between the public and private sectors. We need to continue advancing on critical measures to make the region more competitive for the development of air transport, generate greater opportunities for the population and greater benefits for the countries. Building these bridges involves consistent teamwork, contributing technical knowledge, listening and making proposals. Since its inception, aviation has been an industry that challenges the status quo through innovation, that generates opportunities that were not thought of before, that generates development. And this has been and [...]

By Jose Ricardo Botelho, CEO of ALTA and Adrian Neuhauser President of ALTA We are days away from the end of 2022. A year where aviation has brought us many satisfactions and reactivation results that exceeded our expectations, despite the extremely challenging environment shaped by the conflict in Europe and the macroeconomic environment in our region, which once again challenged us to be more flexible, to adapt our plans as we went along, and to do more with less. So much so that by September we had already surpassed the passenger traffic vs. pre-pandemic in Latin America and Caribbean with over 28.6 million travelers. In this 2022 we also managed to see each other in person, give each other a [...]

By Marianela Cartagena* In previous columns I talked about someone that has a well-developed resourcefulness sense, that being exposed to a series of stimulus or chaotic information situations, will be able to combine elements and generate a structure, among them, to produce a value. We also know that a resourceful leader gets inspired by creative teams when he or she leads them, combining his/her ideas instantly, making accurate decisions, to be successfully in that particular moment. Resourcefulness is the capacity of recursive optimal use; the mental ability to redefine purposes and usage; the quality to convert a thing into something else; to approach new ideas1. Micheal Charles Corballis (1936/2021) quotes René Descartes “I think, therefore I am,” as an example [...]

By Carlos Vianna, Head of Business Development, SITA. The current turbulent economic environment is undoubtedly adding new challenges for aviation, an industry still reeling from the devastating impacts of COVID-19. Operating on thin margins and with an ambitious goal of net zero carbon by 2050, can the industry ensure its long-term success and growth after the pandemic? We believe that growth and an environmentally sustainable industry are not mutually exclusive, but to achieve both, we must start now. The recovery of aviation and the benefits for the world economy SITA data shows that the industry recovery in 2022 is underway: in 2021, global air traffic was at 64% of pre-COVID levels, but still 18% higher than 2020 figures. The signs [...]

By Alejandra Labarca* Blockchain technology, or to be more rigorous, the "Distributed Ledger Technology” (DLT) as it is called due to the generic name of the technologies that include the block chain, is breaking with more force in different sectors of the economy to solve already structural bottlenecks and that only a technological shock can break in order to expand the productivity limits in different industries. The emergence of blockchain technology in 2008, during what was called the "subprime crisis" was nothing more than the result of a history of work initiated by intellectuals, mathematicians, computer scientists, Crypto-Punkies using cryptography as a method. It was not just a technical job but rather something based on strong paradigm-shifting beliefs about how [...]