This year's World Routes got off to a entertaining start yesterday as a large number of delegates attended the evening welcome reception, sponsored by Sabiha Gökçen International Airport. Airline and airport executives from across the world mixed with tourism officials, suppliers, members of the media and the Routes and wider UBM Aviation teams for an informal night of networking to a background of choral entertainment.
Each year the meetings between airlines and airports at World Routes are set against the economic and political backdrops of our time and I doubt we have ever seen such a varied, dramatic and changeable global environment as we witnessed in 2011.
Economically Europe and the US are still struggling to recover from the financial crisis and recessions of the past few years, whereas the outlook for Asia and Latin America remains strong. This year has seen dramatic political upheaval across North Africa and parts of the Middle East, and we have witnessed the terrible impact of natural disasters, in particular the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan.
As the world’s airlines, airports and stakeholders examine the markets they wish to serve, the only certainty we face is one of a constantly changing landscape within which we operate. But, this is what makes events like this year’s The 17th World Route Development Forum so important and it is no surprise that this year’s event is host to the largest number of global airline and airport attendees in its history.
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