NigerianFLIGHTDECK Travel and Business Reportage 
INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu has reminded air traffic safety electronics personnel that the shared intent of all air transport stakeholders globally must be to sustain or improve how safely, securely, and efficiently the air transport network continues to perform despite its significant and continuous growth.
He made this known when he delivered his keynote address to the International Federation of Air Traffic Safety Electronics Associations 47th General Assembly in Montréal.
“As you embark on this year’s event, I’d encourage you to keep in mind the transformational power of aviation to improve the lives of people everywhere,” he underscored. “Aviation growth, and especially the number of direct routes between given destinations, correlates quite closely with the positive socio-economic impacts which result from this connectivity.”
Dr. Aliu further told his audience of air traffic safety electronics personnel that, “it is against this background that ICAO has worked with great determination in recent years to bring our sector together to establish and update some essential strategic planning,” he noted, “and our complementary ICAO Global Plans for Aviation Safety and Air Navigation Capacity and Efficiency have established comprehensive targets to guide and align our respective objectives.”
President Aliu further reminded his IFATSEA audience that ICAO will be conducting its second Global Air Navigation Industry Symposium, or GANIS, this December, and that their presence there would bring benefit to the proceedings being planned.
“The GANIS event is being conducted back to back with our related Safety and Air Navigation Implementation Symposium, and through these joint events we will be reviewing both our Safety and Air Navigation Global Plans in great detail,” he highlighted. “We will also be endeavouring to resolve some suitable methods to improve the operational performance of the air navigation system, and most especially where performance gaps have already been identified.”
Appreciating that one of the key areas where ICAO and IFATSEA cooperation has seen solid results is in the training domain, President Aliu stressed that aviation sustainability is threatened on many fronts today in light of the projected shortages of skilled personnel which have come to light in recent years, and that human resources development is therefore essential to the long-term viability of air transport operations.
“ICAO’s main responses have been to establish our Next Generation Aviation Professionals, or ‘NGAP’ programme, to help align sectoral actions to confront this challenge, in addition to our Global Aviation Training Office (GAT),” President Aliu remarked. “and we have also been very grateful for the crucial support of IFATSEA on our ICAO Manual on Air Traffic Safety Electronics Personnel Competency-based Training and Assessment.”
President Aliu concluded by commenting that ICAO’s No Country Left Behind initiative is presently striving to assure that all States can access the benefits of air transport equally, a priority which references ICAO’s efforts to help States take advantage of the fact that safe and dependable air transport operations enable the achievement of so many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targeted under the UN Agenda 2030.
“As ICAO pursues these objectives, which will have long lasting impacts on the peace and prosperity which is realized in countries far and wide, we also appreciate that greater progress can be achieved on the basis of the excellent cooperation established between ICAO, IFATSEA and other industry stakeholders,” President Aliu concluded.
“Our Member States remain very grateful for the proactive industry contributions which greatly aid our standards setting, capacity-building, and global planning priorities, and we will be looking forward to more collaboration with IFATSEA and its membership, well into the future.”
