Urgent action required to address airline industry skills crisis

Southern African airlines will face a potentially crippling shortage of skills, while also failing to hit employee transformation targets, if governments do not fix basic and tertiary education, the Airlines Association of Southern Africa (AASA) has warned. Speaking at the AASA’s forty-seventh annual general assembly conference, in KwaZulu-Natal, on Friday, CEO Chris Zweigenthal said airlines, together with the entire aerospace industry, were dependent on a pipeline of young, appropriately educated talent who they can prepare, with bridging training, for careers in the sector.