The International Air Transport Association has announced an organisational restructuring of its main divisions and regional operations to even better address the wishes of its 240 member airlines.
Senior management changes were also announced to support the hot structure.
All changes will take effect from July 1st 2013.
A key tenet of the restructuring is the idea of ‘Global Development, Regional Delivery’.
“IATA is changing to deliver even greater value to its members.
“Strengthening our regional structures where we’re closest to our members may help us to realize and meet their needs better.
“We have also regrouped activities that experience grown organically through the years with the goal of being more intuitive to these we tackle.
“This will optimize our ability to develop, modernize and deliver the worldwide standards that are the inspiration of aviation-enabled global connectivity,” said Tony Tyler, IATA director general.
IATA’s regional operations would be consolidated from seven regional structures into five.
These can be based across the five hubs (Amman, Beijing, Madrid, Miami and Singapore) where IATA has already been amalgamating activities linked to its industry financial systems.
Each region remains to be led by a regional vp who’s accountable for driving all activities within their region, while maintaining the consistency of IATA’s global standards and positions.
To ensure effective regional input to IATA’s leadership, RVPs will report back to the director general.
Under the plans North and South America should be consolidated into an Americas region and based in Miami.
The combined region may be led by Peter Cerda who’s promoted from regional director for safety, operations and infrastructure for the Americas to RVP for the Americas.
Africa and Middle East North Africa would be combined into one region to be called Africa and Middle East.
Hussein Dabbas, from IATA’s Amman regional office, will lead the region as RVP.
Asia-Pacific, North Asia and Europe will continue to serve members in those regions as inside the current structure with regional offices in Singapore, Beijing and Madrid.
The RVPs leading these regions stay Maunu Von Lueders, Zhang Baojian and Rafael Schvartzman, respectively.