DOHA, Qatar - When it comes to challenges facing the airline industry, inflation, fuel prices and labor shortages take a backseat to politics, according to the CEO of the state-owned airline of Qatar., Suzanne Rowan Kelleher reports for Forbes. Continue reading original article.
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
22 September 2022 - “The biggest challenge to the industry, of course, is political upheaval,” Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker told an audience at the IATA World Financial Symposium in Doha. Al Baker is also Secretary-General of Qatar Tourism.
As part of the same panel discussion on Tuesday, Al Baker also said that the Covid pandemic was “the biggest challenge to aviation in our living memory,” before running through a litany of other obstacles. “And then there is the oil price, then there is shortage of manpower, there is no investment because of the the climate issues that is happening in the world in infrastructure,” he said.
Al Baker was most pointed in his criticism about restrictions imposed upon airlines in the name of climate change. “And then governments unnecessarily putting restrictions on aviation to sustain political gains in many of the countries around the world, to show that they are looking after the environment and that aviation is the biggest emitter of CO2, misleading the public who depend so much on aviation for trade, for tourism, for sustaining jobs,” he said.
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Jamie Whitney, Associate Editor
Intelligent Aerospace
