Air Canada’s Rovinescu is the new IATA Chairman

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced that Calin Rovinescu, President and CEO of Air Canada, has assumed his duties as Chairman of the IATA Board of Governors for a one-year term, effective immediately.

Rovinescu succeeds Richard H. Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, whose one-year term expired at the conclusion of the Association’s 70th Annual General Meeting (AGM) and World Air Transport Summit in Doha, Qatar.

Rovinescu joined Air Canada in 2000 as Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategy. In addition, he held the position of Chief Restructuring Officer during the airline’s 2003-2004 restructuring. From 2004 until he rejoined Air Canada in 2009 in his current position, Rovinescu was a Co-founder and Principal of Genuity Capital Markets, an independent investment bank. Prior to 2000, he spent more than 20 years in the legal profession, including serving as the Managing Partner at Stikeman Elliott in Montreal.

“As we continue to celebrate 100 years of commercial aviation, I am excited at the opportunity of taking on the Chairmanship of the IATA Board of Governors. Air transport delivers enormous benefits to the global economy every day. I look forward to working closely with Director General and CEO Tony Tyler to encourage and support industry and government policies and practices that will enable aviation to play an even bigger role in the global economy during the second century of commercial flight,” said Rovinescu.

“On behalf of IATA’s 240 members, I want to extend our thanks to Richard for his strong leadership during a year in which an historic agreement to develop a market-based measure to manage aviation’s carbon emissions was reached through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) with the strong support of IATA,” said Tyler.

“Under Richard’s leadership, IATA partnered with key stakeholders to deliver significant results. We worked with ICAO and governments to modernize the approach of the Tokyo Convention on the treatment of disruptive passengers. We concluded a formal partnership with Airports Council International (ACI) on a broad range of issues. This includes the Smart Security initiative, which aims to strengthen security, increase operational efficiency, and improve the passenger experience. And we worked with the travel value chain to build trust and support for the development of the standards for the New Distribution Capability (NDC), for which the US Department of Transportation gave tentative approval in May,” said Tyler.

“Calin will be a fitting successor to Richard. His proven leadership will be crucial as IATA works with our industry and government partners to address a number of priorities, including aircraft tracking, improving safety in Africa, and continuing to support ICAO efforts to draft a market-based measure. I know I can count on Calin to provide strong support for the NDC initiative to modernize the standard for transmission of airline product offers,” said Tyler.

IATA also announced that the Board of Governors appointed Andres Conesa, Aeromexico CEO to serve as Chairman from June 2015 following Rovinescu’s term.