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ACI World Report – September 2015
Message from Angela Gittens Director General, ACI World Dear Colleagues, As summer ends in the Northern Hemisphere, the conference season heats up, including the ACI-North America and ACI-Africa annual conference, assembly and exhibition; in Long Beach, California, 4–7 October and Hammamet, Tunisia, 18–25 October, respectively. The ACI-NA event is perennially the largest ACI event of the year and explores modern solutions for the full range of traditional and emerging issues of our dynamic industry. Environmental stewardship, customer service, air service development and commercial management beyond the airport terminal join with safety, security and other business issues on the agenda. Ahead of the conference, five highly active ACI-NA committees are putting on workshops on the key issues in their disciplines. And we can expect an enjoyable social programme in this exciting Southern California city. ACI-Africa’s annual conference has become the premier event of the year in African aviation, bringing together highlevel stakeholders from every segment of the industry to debate and resolve the key issues in this diverse continent of emerging and developing nations. This year will bring an incisive exploration on the theme of Leadership and Innovation in Airport Management, underscoring the increasingly sophisticated approach to the business that the African
airport sector has adopted. As well, the conference will examine emerging topics of the potential of technology for customer service delivery improvements and commercial revenue generation, and the growing cyber security threat. And as much as we look forward to the business portions of the event, we look forward to the excellent cuisine and gracious hospitality in this seaside resort. We also look forward to a trailblazing collaboration that will produce the 2015 AVSEC World Conference, 26–28 October in Dublin, Ireland. For the first time, ACI, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) will jointly organize a conference on the subject of aviation security, a subject of high priority to all three of our memberships: airports, governments and airlines. Aptly, the theme is Risk Management: Collaborate. Coordinate. Communicate. Among other subjects, the conference will report on the outcomes to date of the initiatives under the ACI/IATA Smart Security and Security Access and Egress projects, which have now been merged. In addition to sharing best practices among those of us in the industry, we will reach out to other industries that have lessons from which we can learn. This is an exciting venture unto itself and may lead to more collaborations in the future for the benefit of our respective members.