IATA visit Madrid
IATA company visit was from 1500 – 1800. As planned we asked all students to dress accordingly and not look homeless… What’s a study trip without anyone looking homeless for a company visit? The time for agreed to meet at the foyer in the Hostel was 1445, everyone was not there and dress code was not adequate. After discussion and everyone arriving, we departed and set sail for IATA…… by public transport. NIGHTMARE! I think this is the first time I have seen Ivan stressed (Poor Ivan). With minutes to spare, we made it on time to meet Miss Karoliina Rissanen in the foyer. We soon discovered she was Finnish and studied at Haaga in 2006 and studied tourism. Miss Rissanen has worked with IATA since 2008 and has great passion with the mindset of constant change. Our afternoon was filled with much information.
Mr Loic Lespagnol and Mr Sergejs Balonuskovs (Intern from Riga) role was to promote safe, regular and economical air transportation for the benefit of people in the world to foster commerce and to study the problems connected with it. Both Mr Lespagnol and Balonuskovs detail how they promote their services when necessary.
Mr Francisco Rizzuto manages Center of Excellence for Independence Validations (CEIV) with pharmaceutical handling. His role is to generate a standard that all parties should handle all medications that are being transported from the manufacture / supplier to the customer overseas.
Mr Rory Sergison has 19 years’ experience in airline operations. His role in IATA is IATA Operational Safety Audit / Airline Operations Safety Management (IOSA). The focus is to ensure it improves worldwide airline safety levels and to reduce the number or audits in the airline industry. We observed that aviation safety holds many manuals which airlines, airports and other stakeholders must comply with and how an organisation is accredited to comply with IATA standards. I am sure many people believe a safety management career is dry but this has been an area of interest for myself as after I complete my degree, I am perusing a career in this area and gain my masters in safety.
The final presentation for the day was with an English chap. Mr Chris Watt. His area of expertise is IATA products portfolio (European Commercial). He begun with stating prior to 2007, airlines funded IATA’s budget, today less than 4% comes from membership fees. This is because commercial sales contribute to the funding of IATA. IATA’s concept of finding current and future trends and building tools to allow organisations join the dots to assist them with marketing has enabled airlines, airports and other major stakeholders to develop.
