SACAA's National Aviation Conference 2024

I spent Thursday 18 and Friday 19 April attending National Aviation Conference hosted by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) staged at the CSIR Conference Centre in Pretoria. As you can see from the attached pictures the conference was very well attended and I was impressed by the programme and the quality of the various speakers including the four discussion panels.

- Athol Franz

After the welcome and the singing of South Africa’s national anthem, the SACAA’ Director for Civil Aviation (DCA) opened the two-day conference with the following words:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you would have noticed that this year’s version of the NAC carries a little twist because it is taking place over two days, unlike in the past, where we packed deliberations into one day. We have listened to you when you said that you wish for us to consider adding more time for engagements. In the past year, we were not able to finish our programme due to the healthy engagements that prevailed on the day. We are therefore hoping we can make use of the time allocated for each topic.

For the first time this year we have allocated a dedicated session for discussions on sustainability. Not only is this focus timely but it also responds to the direction the global aviation is headed as the world puts more emphasis on environmental issues. The global aviation industry made some bold resolutions in the previous 41st ICAO Assembly and we gave feedback of those resolutions to our own local industry as we dedicated two speakers in the previous NAC to tackle such resolutions.