Skift Travel News Blog

The International Air Transport Association‘s board of governors has appointed RwandAir CEO Yvonne Manzi Makolo to serve as its chair, making her the first woman ever to lead the global airline agency.

Makolo, who has led RwandAir since 2018, will serve a one-year term as IATA’s chair from June 2023, succeeding Mehmet Tevfik Nane, the managing director of discount Turkish carrier Pegasus. Nane took over the role of IATA chair from JetBlue Airways CEO Robin Hayes on June 20 during the organization’s annual general meeting.

Makolo is one of the few women holding a senior role at a major airline. IATA estimates that close to 9 percent of airline CEOs are women.

Snap claimed Etihad trimmed its “costs per flight search” four-fold using Snap’s new dynamic travel ads, which is now rolled out globally.

This ad format, according to Snap, is a travel category expansion that enables advertisers, including airlines, hotels, destinations and tour operators, to engage in advanced audience targeting based on a Snapchatter’s travel intent and backed by local relevance.”

“With travel demand seeing a continued strong recovery in Q1 2022, we were of course keen to capitalize by converting existing customers and, importantly, acquiring new ones,” Phil Dodwell, who heads marketing at Etihad, said in a statement. “However, the marketplace for air travel remains highly competitive so ensuring relevance is key.”

He said the airline will be continuing to use Snap’s dynamic travel ads in the second quarter, and particularly likes the format’s prospecting capabilities.

Snap’s prime users are Gen Zers and Millennials.

The 26-member Star Alliance airline group is planning to add its first non-airline member, CEO Jeffrey Goh said on May 12.

Goh did not want to get ahead of a formal announcement expected in the next several weeks, but he said the partner would be in Europe and would most likely be a railroad. “I will take your money if you wanted to bet on the railways,” he told reporters.

It remains unclear if passengers would be able to redeem travel or earn points on the non-airline partner.

Separately, Goh said Star is launching an alliance-wide, co-branded credit card, an industry first. The card would allow members to earn points to redeem on the Star Alliance frequent-flier program of their choice, he said. The card will launch in an unspecified market in the third quarter of this year. If it is successful, the alliance will expand it to other markets, Goh said.

Norman Y. Mineta, the Transportation Secretary who closed the U.S. airspace and ordered the grounding of 4,000 planes in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has died. He was 90 years old.

Mineta died at his home in Edgewater, Md., of a heart ailment, John Flaherty, his former chief of staff, said.

Mineta, a first-generation Japanese American, began his public career in local politics in California. In 1971, he became the first Asian American elected to represent a major American city, San Jose, his native city and the second-largest in California. In 1974, he began a 10-term congressional career, representing Silicon Valley.

During his time in Congress, Mineta was instrumental in getting the U.S. government to apologize and award reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. This was personal for Mineta: When he was 10 years old, he and his family were sent from California to an internment camp in Wyoming. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Americans of Japanese descent interned in February 1942, two months after the Japanese bombarded Pearl Harbor.

After his tenure in Congress and a subsequent stint in the private sector, Mineta served briefly as Commerce Secretary in the Clinton administration, the first Asian American to serve in that role. President George W. Bush tapped him to be Transportation Secretary, the sole Democrat in Bush’s cabinet.

Mineta acted decisively after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He and then-FAA Administrator Jane Garvey took the unprecedented step of closing the U.S. airspace, forcing the grounding of more than 4,000 aircraft, and requiring planes in the air to land immediately, at the closest airport. The airspace remained closed for more than two days, a period which has not been repeated since.

Mineta led the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and oversaw the security protocols that endure to this day. A civil rights activist, Mineta famously opposed racial profiling by the new TSA in its security checks at airports. The TSA was created by an act of Congress in November 2001 and eventually was folded into the new Homeland Security Department.

In 2001, his hometown renamed its airport the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport in recognition of his service to the city.

Norman Mineta was born on Nov. 12, 1931, in San Jose. After the war, he returned to California and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1953. He is survived by his wife Danealia, four sons, and 11 grandchildren.