Message from the President of the Council

As a new era of aviation dawns, it is our duty to reflect on the profound transformations that the many new technologies and operations now confronting us will require.

These adjustments will be cross-cutting in nature, presenting challenges and opportunities of a social, commercial, administrative, legal, political and technological nature, and across every strategic domain of international civil aviation. Taking a broader view, we can appreciate how every area of society currently served by air connectivity will be notably impacted by the incredible surge of innovation facing our sector.

This raises important questions for ICAO and its stakeholders, such as how to reform the global civil aviation system to not merely accommodate pilotless, urban mobility, hypersonic, and suborbital flights, but indeed to foster their growth and maturation safely and efficiently in the same way that we have made today’s industry possible.

We must also rise to the challenge of how to advocate even more effectively than we are today for the significant public investments which will be required for the next generation civil aviation network.

As the custodian of the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation, ICAO is at the heart of these conversations, and in many ways, we are also the object of them.

The ICAO Council is fully committed, as always, to overseeing and working with the Organization’s Secretariat to ensure its continued efficiency and effectiveness. This is essential in order to sustain ICAO’s ability to cooperate with and assist States as they address the near- and longer term issues of growth and innovation in aviation.

This objective is largely being achieved today through the streamlining of ICAO’s operations, and the Council’s assigning of a prioritized focus on tomorrow’s challenges. It has been quite concretely reflected in this much more succinct Annual Report of the Council for 2018.

It’s important for ICAO to raise these concerns, and to encourage more acute discussions on these topics throughout 2019 – our 75th Anniversary year. I hope it serves as a very useful resource for the worldwide delegates now preparing for our 40th Assembly in September, and I will look forward with all of you to the important decisions and progress to be achieved later this year.

Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu

President of the ICAO Council