The most important event in the region’s airline industry, the ALTA AGM & Airline Leaders Forum, kicked off its 2022 edition on Sunday morning, October 16.
Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, was the city chosen for executives and authorities from Latin America to meet in a series of meetings and conferences that will focus on sustainability and a look to the future, in the first year of relative normality after the pandemic.
“It is a pleasure to be in Argentina to work on an intense agenda.” said José Ricardo Botelho, CEO of ALTA, at the opening conference. “We want to address all the issues that concern us in Latin America and the Caribbean.,” he added.
On the Argentinian authorities’ side, National Civil Aviation Administration head Paola Tamburelli said “it is a pleasure to welcome you to Buenos Aires, a city that will become the aviation capital of the region for the next three days,” and stressed that “last year’s conference in Bogota focused on system resilience: this forum finds us in a different scene. The trend this time is expansion.”
The other speaker at the opening conference was Roberto Alvo, CEO of LATAM and chairman of ALTA’s Executive Committee. “This conference is a very important event for us” and “we have more than 500 participants and nearly 80% of the region’s traffic represented in ALTA” were the words of the executive, whose company recently ratified that it expects to exit Chapter 11 next November 3.
“We could see a spirited market recovery in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are seeing a more definitive recovery period. 2023 will continue that recovery, and 2024 will be the year of normalcy for us” he added.
“We had to survive the pandemic without state support and with very unfavorable macroeconomic variables,” he continued. And Alvo put -again- the issue of sustainability on the table: “the biggest challenge in aviation today is decarbonization. We call on the governments of the region to work together to achieve public policies that protect one of the most important means of transportation in the region.”
During the next three days, the agenda will include presentations by Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and other relevant companies in the sector, as well as panels where airline CEOs and authorities from national and international organizations will discuss current issues and trends in the regional market.
One of the highlights of the agenda will be the panel “Aviation growth while facing the newest challenges” in which Celso Ferrer, CEO of GOL, Javier Sanchez-Prieto, CEO of Iberia and John Rodgerson, CEO of Azul, will share their points of view.
Another panel will focus on the outlook of Low-Cost operators in the region in the post pandemic: Estuardo Ortiz, CEO JetSMART; Felix Antelo, CEO of Viva Air; Jose Ignacio Dougnac, CEO of Sky Airline; Mauricio Sana, CEO of Flybondi and Eduardo Lombana, CEO of Wingo will speak.
Sustainability will also be a challenge for debate, with panels on SAF and innovation: there will be representatives from Boeing, Embraer, Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, Neste and SITA.
Another great panel will be “The CEOs’ Journey” moderated by Gabriela Frias, journalist of CNN en Espanol and will feature Adrian Neuhauser, CEO of Avianca Group; Andres Conesa, CEO of Aeromexico; Pablo Ceriani, CEO of Aerolineas Argentinas and Pedro Heilbron, CEO of Copa Airlines.
The Aviacionline team is in Buenos Aires covering this event, so during the next three days you will be able to follow the coverage both here and on our social networks.
