Karen Walker is Air Transport World Editor-in-Chief and Aviation Week Network Group Air Transport Editor-in-Chief. She joined ATW in 2011 and oversees the editorial content and direction of ATW, Routes and Aviation Week Group air transport content.
Karen serves on the board of directors of the International Aviation Club of Washington and was the IAC’s President in 2017-2018.
Karen has been writing about the aerospace and air transport industries for more than 35 years and is a recognized authority and commenter on the airline industry. She is a regular speaker and moderator at aviation events worldwide and a commentator on radio and TV news programs. In 2019, she was a judge and a presenter for IATA’s inaugural diversity awards.
Based in Washington D.C., she gained her degree in journalism in the U.K. and is a multiple winner of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s aerospace journalism awards.
She is the recipient of the Aerospace Media Awards 2021 Aerospace Writer of the Year.
Facilitators of an Asia-Pacific initiative that brings together turboprop aircraft operators in the region to share safety issues and best practices hope to bring in more airline and manufacturer participants in 2017.
You became the IATA director general having run a major airline group and held prominent industry and government positions. What most appealed to you about this post? I have spent 20 years in this business—with seven or eight years in between in government. When you have worked for more than 20 years in the aviation business, at an OEM, at an airline, you see the business from two different perspectives. Now I see it from a third angle, which is probably higher than the others, and that’s from the general interests of the industry.
By 2019, Beijing Capital, Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore all will have reached their runway capacity limits. Terminals at three of them also hit capacity.
