Prominent personalities of the African aviation industry will gather in Addis Ababa tomorrow to deliberate on transforming the African airline industry at the 42nd general assembly of the African Airlines Association (AFRAA) to be held from November 22 to 23 at the Addis Ababa UNECA conference hall.
Officials of AFRAA, the African Civil Aviation Commission (AFCAC), the African Union, IATA, ICAO and major African airlines CEOs will participate at the AFRAA’s general assembly. Representatives of major aircraft, engine and parts manufacturers such as Boeing, Airbus and Pratt and Whitney will attend the meeting. Ethiopian Airlines will host the meeting while the renowned manufacturers will sponsor lunch and gala dinner parties. The delegates also visited the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft maintenance and other facilities over the weekend.
One of the main working sessions at the conference is the airline CEOs forum in which Girma Wake, Ethiopian CEO and president of AFRAA, Hussein Massoud of Egypt Air, Rammah Ettir of Afriqiyah Airways, Alphone Kioko of Precision Air, Kinfe Kassaye of Air Nigeria (a senior executive of Ethiopian Airlines recently transferred to Air Nigeria), and Abdelrahman Bethe, of Air Mali, will be discussing transforming the African airline industry to create opportunities. Zemedeneh Negatu, managing partner of East Africa Ernst and Young, will be the moderator.
The acting secretary general of AFRAA, Tewodros Tamrat, will present the association’s annual report. Tewodrso assumed this position after the sudden resignation of Nick Fadugba last June. Fadugba, owner and manager of African Aviation Services, the publisher of the African Aviation Journal, was elected in November 2009 as general secretary of AFRAA, replacing Christian Folly-Kossi who served AFRAA for ten years. Fadugba assumed the position in February 2010 and resigned last June.
Tewodros Tamrat, the current acting secretary general, is an experienced aviation law expert and industry analyst with a combined aviation experience spanning over 25 years. He served the legal department of Ethiopian in the 1990s. Before his current role in AFRAA he was director of government, corporate and industry affaires of the association. The AFRAA general assembly is expected to confirm Tamrat’s.
President of AFRAA, Girma Wake, will handover his position to the new president who will be elected by the general assembly. Wake will be leaving his office at Ethiopian in January. The conference will discuss safety and security, airline business model what is working and not working in Africa, expanding to Middle East and Asia, opportunities for African carriers in Asia. In the course of the meeting, members of the executive committee of AFRAA will be elected.
Representatives of Boeing will brief the media on the state of the airline industry on Monday at the UNECA.