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At this year’s World Cargo Symposium in Dubai, IATA’s conference programme was criticised for being “derivative” and “contradictory”.
Many delegates to the 2025 WCS told The Loadstar the programme felt “cut and paste”, and those active in the tech sector suggesting “this is what it must been like in the 1990s” for most other industries.
One tech executive said: “People come to the WCS for the exhibition, and that is good, but as far as the conference goes, it could be 1990, 2001, 2021.
“The fact is, I found myself asking why is this relevant to digitising the airfreight sector? Yes, they say ‘technology is good, we should use that’, but we have known this for 30 years; the programme has not moved on, it is not telling us anything new.”
Another complained: “There’s a real lack of innovation in both the conference and exhibition”, and suggested “if this were finance, there would be AI everywhere”.
“As an industry, it [air cargo] is just very stuck in its ways, It talks about digitisation, technology, whatever, but when is it going to get there? Will it ever get there? I’d like to see conference programmes address this, and apply more pressure.”
One cargo handler asked what the point was of sitting through a discussion on combatting uncertainty that gave no answers.
“Essentially, the world is in an uncertain moment. If you’re agile you’ll survive, if you’re not, wait and see. Well, what if we’re not agile? It did not really offer us any support or advice, it just said ‘wait and see’.
“It was all a bit contradictory; you had an economist up there saying ‘the trade war is real, it will impact you’ and then IATA director general Willy Walsh suggesting it wouldn’t.”
Yet another attendee concurred, asking: “Why am I here to hear people say they ‘don’t know what is going on’? I want to learn something or get some sort of support from a conference programme, that’s why I’m here.”
However, chief strategy and transformation officer at Atlas Air Martin Drew offered IATA some support.
“It has been a great show, a great conference, and it has been well attended, sustaining the jump in attendance that Hong Kong got last year, surging from 1,000 to around 1,800 over these last two shows,” Mr Drew told The Loadstar.
“On digitisation, I do think the industry has come a very long way in recent years, and I think this was, in part, prompted by Covid.”
Despite hostility towards the programme, none of those who complained were able to suggest what would make the next WCS better, although one aviation source suggested IATA picks “topics that are new and not talk on issues they can’t really add to”.
Another said while they disliked the conference, they would return to a WCS, because the “high level” gathering of industry peers made it worthwhile.
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