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.
The most significant traffic growth, according to IATA calculations, will be in Asia where traffic, including China, is expected to increase by about 50% from 2012 to 2020. Other hot-spot growth areas are South America and the Middle East—both forecast to see traffic increases of 40% each—and Africa, where 11% traffic increases are expected by 2020. So even if, as also expected, the traffic numbers for North America and Europe continue at their current flat levels, the high traffic growths of other regions will pile on top of an existing global baseline.
When the European Commission (EC) agreed last year temporarily to suspend its emission trading scheme (ETS) carbon tax for flights to and from the European Union, the move was universally welcomed.
When it comes to safety and aircraft, a good news story is bound to be very good indeed. And so for IATA, 2012 provided not just an exceptionally good story, but was a banner year. Member airlines had their safest year ever, with no hull-loss accidents on Western-built jets.
