Helping ICAO to stay at the forefront of academic coordination toward establishing a dependable and skilled Next Generation of Aviation Professionals (NGAP), ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu provided opening remarks earlier today to the first general meeting of the International Association of Aviation and Aerospace Education, or ‘ALICANTO’, which was hosted at ICAO on the eve of its 40th Assembly.
“I greatly commend ALICANTO’s mission and initiative to serve as a global advocate for aviation education, and to represent, promote, and support the interests of its members,” President Aliu remarked. “We are looking forward to increasing involvement between ICAO and applicable aviation and technical universities all over the world, and ALICANTO is expected to deliver on that need.”
The ALICANTO initiative was launched through an earlier agreement established last year at ICAO’s Next Generation of Aviation Professionals Summit in Shenzhen, China. It underscores the key importance today of the overall ICAO NGAP programme in bringing together States, educational and training institutions, United Nations organizations, industry and other actors to address existing and future aviation personnel shortages.
“This is an important priority in aviation today, and in every corner of the world, because consistent with historic trends the aviation network is continuing to grow and to serve more and more communities and businesses as it does,” the President said.
“We are also witnessing quite major transformations in aviation today, including the increasing deployment and application of new aircraft and operations, many of which you will have seen on display as you entered ICAO today, and this adds further impetus to our work together given how all of these solutions will require new skilled personnel to operate and manage them, well into the future.”
The President concluded by noting that aviation is presently confronted by the fact that as it continues to record healthy traffic growth, its workforce is shrinking due to the inevitable demographics of aging populations, lowering birth rates, and other attrition factors.
He stressed the need for all concerned to recognize that aviation has to do a much better job of attracting, educating, training, and retaining the skilled workers and managers it now requires, and wished the assembled officials a productive meeting toward establishing new means for ICAO and global aviation academic institutions to partner on and succeed toward that objective.
