EDITORIAL: Why IATA’s virtual AGM decision was harder to make than most organizations

No one will be more disappointed by the decision announced today that IATA’s 2020 AGM event is going virtual than the association’s leader, Alexandre de Juniac.

De Juniac took the helm as director general and CEO exactly four years ago, in September 2016, after five years as CEO at Air France and then CEO and chairman at Air France-KLM Group. He is not only passionate about the industry, but this year’s event was to be hosted by his former airline (KLM is still hosting the virtual AGM).

More importantly, however, de Juniac understood the importance of holding on to a live event if at all possible, even as just about every other organization recognized the huge barriers to convening major events in a pandemic, including sanitization and distancing requirements and, most difficult of all for an international event, calculating how to get attendees through the global net of quarantines and border closures.

Those border restrictions have continued far longer than most anticipated and certainly beyond what IATA had hoped. For the most part, Americans cannot travel into much of Europe; Europe itself is talking about potential returns to stronger lockdowns in October; Australia, New Zealand and Canada remain essentially closed off to international travel, as does much of Latin America. China, where the virus hit first and dissipated earliest, is almost alone in resurrecting live events this year, but they are almost entirely based on domestic attendance.

Nevertheless, de Juniac held out for a live AGM for as long as there was some possibility of the lifting of border restrictions that IATA has been campaigning for since early spring. The airline industry, of all industries, does not want companies and organizations seeing virtual events as long-term alternatives. Live events are huge drivers of air traffic demand, particularly the all-important business travel. And if the world’s airline senior executives could have been seen arriving to meet for real at a major international city, it would have been a huge endorsement of their faith in the safety of flying, especially the long-haul flying that most people remain wary of.

The IATA AGMs move from country to country, each hosted by a different airline, and they bring together hundreds of airline and aviation industry executives and media from all around the world. The stars, of course, are the more than 200 airline CEOs who show up not just for the AGM official procedures, but also to give presentations, network and mingle at the receptions and dinners. A virtual event cannot capture that A-list atmosphere that the AGM now generates.

De Juniac first took the baton from Tony Tyler in 2016 in Dublin and then hosted AGMs in Cancun, Sydney and, last year, in Seoul. The 2019 event was arguably one of the most successful and well organized ever, attracting some 1,000 attendees and addressing meaty issues such as sustainability and the flight-shaming movement (remember that?), the MAX grounding and diversity.

Privately, many of the airline CEOs, who now have so many pressing priorities and hour-to-hour difficult decisions at their home bases, are likely relieved that they will be able to sign off on this year’s AGM agenda from their own conference rooms. None would have wanted to be seen having cocktails and dinners in these times.

The 2021 AGM in June will, in all likelihood, still be a somber event of reckoning and industry adjustment. But the fervent hope is that by then there will be much stronger signs of a recovery in air travel demand … and that AGM attendees can meet in person again.