Air Canada president and CEO Calin Rovinescu.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Air Canada president and chief executive officer Calin Rovinescu is taking over as chairman of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) board of governors for a one-year term.
Mr. Rovinescu succeeds Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, whose one-year term has just expired.
"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," Mr. Rovinescu said.
"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."
Among the issues Mr. Rovinescu will tackle are aircraft tracking, safety improvements in Africa, emissions offsetting and industry-wide standardization of services, said Mr. Tyler.
On Monday, IATA said at its annual meeting in Doha that it wants to implement an industry-wide method of keeping track of aircraft flights in real time. The initiative comes almost three months after the disappearance of Malaysian jetliner MH370.
IATA plans to table a flight-tracking proposal at the United Nation's International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in September. The ICAO has in turn said a standard could be in place in two or three years' time.
But Mr. Tyler said individual airlines could take action on their own sooner than that.
Bertrand Marotte