Industry Leaders sign up for Routes Middle East & Africa Strategy Summit

Opening Routes Middle East & Africa on Sunday 31^st May 2015, The Routes Middle East & Africa Strategy Summit will take place at the event in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.

Sponsored by Embraer, the Routes Middle East & Africa Strategy Summit will provide a valuable insight into aviation across the region as panels of leading industry experts take part in a number of moderator led panel sessions addressing key air service development issues affecting commercial aviation across the Middle East and Africa regions.

The Strategy Summit will take place over two days and promises to deliver aviation thought leaders from across Africa and the Middle East. The interactive conference presents delegates with the opportunity to join these talks and hear from some of the most senior aviation specialists from the Middle East and Africa.

H.E. Engineer Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications will open the Routes Middle East & Africa Strategy Summit followed by a Welcome Address from our host, Bahrain Airport Company delivered by their CEO, Mohamed Yousif Al Binfalah.

The specially developed content and interactive format ensures that the Strategy Summit is a popular element of the event, and comprise of five different panel sessions and a number of other presentations. Many leading industry experts have already confirmed their participation including: Adel Ali, CEO, Air Arabia; Paul Byrne, Chief Executive Officer, Flynas; Aloke Singh, Chief Officer Network Planning, Oman Air; Dr. Elijah Chingosho, Secretary General, African Airlines Association; Fernando Estrada, Chief Strategy Officer, Vueling; Girma Shiferaw, Director Alliances & Network Planning, Ethiopian Airlines and Richard Bodin, Chief Commercial Officer, Fastjet.

Session one, entitled Arab Liberalisation – Are the skies really opening up? Will look at the 2004 Damascus convention and the framework for liberalisation in the Arab world that came into force in 2007. Has there been much change since then? Do bi-lateral restrictions remain the norm in the Arab world? Certain countries that have made open skies declarations, such as UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, what changes have these countries seen? Are the processes and protocols maturing in step with traffic growth?

During the second session; Information Exchange / Regulatory Reform the discussion will cover how the two MH disasters of 2014 have highlighted issues in information exchange and the growing need for regulatory reform, if there is a need for greater global regulation and support and collaboration? And what the role is of governments, IATA, ICAO, and airlines in the process? This session will also include an update from the ICAO / IATA task force investigating whether current protocols are fit for purpose (task force due to report Feb 2015).

Session three and the last session of day one is titled How Does Good Data Bring in New Airlines? and will be moderated by Michael Miller, Head of Content and Industry Relations, Routes, UBM EMEA and include input from John Grant, Executive Vice President, OAG; Fernando Estrada, Chief Strategy Officer, Vueling; Aidan Mooney, Vice President, Consulting, ASM and Kevin O’Toole, Head of Strategy, Flightglobal.

Day two of the summit will include panel sessions four and five, with session four titled Airports – Congestion and building for the future and session five titled Tourism – An economic driver for Africa. This final session which will look at the predictions in tourism growth for the continent, whether it can keep up with the predicted growth? What barriers need to be removed to allow it to reach its full potential and whether visa restrictions need to be relaxed to accelerate this growth?

To view the full Routes Middle East & Africa Strategy Summit programme or for more information and to register for Routes Middle East & Africa 2015 click here.