Covid-19 is pushing the entire industry to find solutions and alternatives for a much-needed re-start, obliging it more than ever to focus its efforts on the short-term. Nonetheless, an entire generation around the world is currently studying or training to work in the future in the air transport industry, be it on the ground or in the air.
As our potential future industry workforce, students at training and academia stakeholders are key. Despite the current pandemic and the industry’s extremely delicate situation, we are prouder than ever to continue developing partnerships with training centers and university aviation programs across our region. Among other things, this enables us to contribute to developing the skilled staff of the future, all the while collaborating and exchanging with tomorrow’s leaders.
In Europe, we currently partner with 29 different academic institutions in 11 countries, including on the following aspects:
Our Nordic & Baltic Office based in Stockholm has been particularly active in developing training and academic alliances, formalizing last summer a partnership with Kazimieras Simonavičius University (KSU) in Lithuania. KSU became the first and only authorized training center (ATC) in IATA Training in the Baltic states, where it will conduct three authorised courses with its accredited IATA instructors. These include Aviation Security Awareness, the Cargo Introductory Course, and Airline Revenue Management.
As part of our ambition to develop and further improve these partnerships, in early December we launched an initiative named ‘Ask IATA’, bringing together Academic institutions and IATA experts around a virtual stage to discuss the present and future of aviation.
Students from KSU and Riga Technical University had the opportunity to raise questions to IATA´s subject matter experts in key areas for aviation such as safety, security, environment, as well as the crisis advocacy strategy put in place to address the Covid-19 pandemic’s consequences on the industry.
“As Covid-19 has heavily impacted aviation, never has working hand in hand with younger generations and future aviation professionals been so vital. The ‘Ask IATA’ webinar we recently organized with both KSU and the Riga Technical University of Latvia is an important step towards the transition to the aviation business of tomorrow”, said Catrin Mattsson, Area Manager Nordic & Baltic.
For Deimantė Žilinskienė, Director of Business School at Kazimieras Simonavičius University, “We are extremely proud to partner with IATA, a truly global reference in aviation, and provide our students with a series of opportunities to acquire critical skills to become successful aviation professionals. The interest and motivation shown by our students in the ‘Ask IATA’ webinar was a great reminder of how fascinating this global industry is, and why younger generations continue to dream of making a career out of it.”
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