Aviation Connect returned to the Grand Hyatt in Athens, Greece, this year – even broader than before, with the addition of two more streams, bringing the total to eight. From 29SEP26-01OCT26, a new dedicated focus on GSSA and Cargo Airport joined the existing ASA, ULD Care, Air Freight Pharma, GSE & RAMP OPS, RFS, and ACHL agendas. The 8th floor hotel pool area with its spectacular view of the Acropolis, provided the backdrop to the Women in Air Cargo and CEO Award ceremonies on the first evening, and the well-known beach party venue on 30SEP26 rounded off a varied, thought-provoking conference program. Here are CargoForwarder Global’s impressions.
Though coming back to the Grand Hyatt in Athens where the ACHL had been held back in 2022 and 2023 (complete with its annual beach party at Bolivar on the Wednesday night), felt familiar, this year’s Aviation Connect stood out in two very pleasing points – for one, the audience appears to be becoming younger and more diverse, and two: there is a palpable shift (for the most part) from company sales pitch presentations to truly sharing learnings and best-demonstrated practices with the industry.
Aviation Connect in numbers
The Aviation Connect/Air Cargo Handling Logistics (ACHL) Conference is always a rich melting pot of airline executives, general sales agents, ground handlers, handling agents, airports, digital innovators, industry authorities and experts, RFS providers, ULD managers, Pharma specialists, and many other stakeholders involved in air cargo and aviation. With registered numbers of roughly 550 attendees, this time, attendance was a little lower than usual – a fact that some participants told CFG, appeared to be down to cost-cutting measures which could become even more intense next year. Nevertheless, attendance in the conference hall and stream rooms was good. 40 exhibitors welcomed people to their booths, and a number of companies had opted for private meeting rooms for their one-to-one customer discussions. Eva International Media once again saw to it that no attendee went hungry, and were praised for their detailed planning and conference delivery – including last-minute open-air heating adaptations when the Greek weather gods decided to drop the usual temperature a few degrees lower than normal for this time of year.
Rooftop Awards
The Women in Air Cargo Awards were held in the open air, pool-side area on the hotel’s 8th floor on 29SEP26, once again celebrating the inspiring women within our industry, nominated by their companies and peers. The winners included: Phaedra den Hertog, Chief Experience Officer (CXO), Awery Aviation Software – IT Category; Nina Strippel, Managing Director, Wallenborn – Road Feeder Services Category; Grace Kelly, Director Commercial Strategy, ACL Airshop – Supply Chain Partnership Category; Stephanie Rajzbaum, Managing Director of TCR North America – GSE Category; Ghariba Suleiman, Director, Cargo & Logistics Partnerships, King Salman International Airport – Airports Category; Lubna Allaham, Senior Manager Cargo Customer Experience, Cargo Commercial, Etihad – Airline Category; Kritika Seth, Executive Director, Allied Aviation – GSSA Category; Celine Hourcade, Vice President, Global Head of ESG / Sustainability, SATS – Category Cargo Handling Agent.
A new award was also launched to honor outstanding CEOs in 6 categories. All winners were all handed their awards by Chris Notter on behalf of Eva International Media, and TIACA’s Roos Bakker as sponsor.
Aviation Connect in topics and takeaways
While the usual topic areas of digitalization, automation/robotics, AI, talent attraction and retention, peppered the agenda, the presentations and panels took a deep-dive into the topics, offering learnings and discussion points. Danita Waterfall-Brizzi, moderating the new Cargo Airport track, pointed out that a cargo airport is no longer just a place, but a logistics platform within the whole supply chain and that investments in airport development must be able to answer to the customers’ shipping needs. David Kerr’s GSSA track explored the spectrum of GSA scenarios and the role of tech in ensuring efficient operations (but also dealing with the topic of cybersecurity), Mohamed Hanno’s Aviation Ground Services stream talked about People, Predictability and Partnerships, the importance of trust in those partnerships, and ensuring that people and not AI are in the driving seat. Stavros Evangelakakis introduced Cool Corridor as a new buzzword and posed the question of sustainable reserve logistics. David Smorenburg. Representing the RFS stream, said the objective of the event was to ask difficult questions, set objectives and build connections, and Henrik Ambak offered a range of topics for the ACHL stream, including robotics, aviation, sustainability, drones, RFS and airport challenges, and teasing “The Big Reveal” (see separate article in this week’s CFG) as an improvement catalyst for the complete supply chain.
Particular highlights
The new GSSA track centered on selling certainty rather than price. Kritika Seth advised: “Do not sacrifice tomorrow’s rate to win today’s shipment.” Claudius Pereira argued that 2026 is a retention market, where quote speed, practical SLAs and exception handling decide who keeps customers: “A quote is not a sale. A booking is not loyalty.” Julia Knecht Ostwaldt’s IT security talk demonstrated a detailed safe-guarding concept and underlined the message that “we don’t just move cargo, we move trust.”
dnata’s Guillaume Crozier shared candid lessons from the company’s new and highly automated AMS facility (FB17), and how these would be applied to upcoming projects in Zurich, Azerbaijan, Milan and Dubai’s AMIA. His advice was to pace innovation and “Don’t play with AI until you get your data level sorted!” Fraunhofer IML’s Harald Sieke followed, forecasting that humanoid robots will come in 3-5 years and operations must become “robot ready” first. Kai Domscheit’s line was “Context is the path to autonomy,” declaring that “Beyond systems, Saas is dead!” The data panel concluded that missing or wrong data can halt automated systems. Emirates described having 250 data analysts and building AI tools with a human always in the loop, agreeing that “Context is incredibly important”.
Wrap up and the final panel
A student and professor panel on the last day, explored why air cargo isn’t seen as an attractive career. Diarto Aalders warned against presenting an industry that doesn’t exist, meaning highlighting glamorous F1 and pharma cargo shipments and deflecting from a “dark, dusty warehouse”. The panel called for internships, guest lectures and joint airport tours.
Track chairs then summarized their sessions. The GSSA track stressed earning trust and repeat business. The cargo airport track urged people to think beyond their job descriptions. ULD Care’s Bob Rogers described the “UnLoved Device”, with around a million units in circulation still run on paper-based processes. The RFS recap noted high-tech cargo offsetting the e-commerce dip, and US ULD damage estimated at USD 300 million a year. The pharma session noted that cool-chain cargo is 4% of volume but 28% of revenue, and that Africa’s airlift shortage has serious human consequences. The GSE session highlighted pooling and eGSE economics, and warned of talent attrition and leadership gaps.
Data quality, collaboration, and people were three common threads throughout the conference – with the greatest emphasis on the latter. People drive change, innovation, and success.
Next year, new location
The next Aviation Connect/ACHL conference is scheduled for 02-04NOV27 and will be taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, for the first time – at a particularly beautiful hotel: the Epic Sana Marquês.
