Andrea Sack

Andrea Sack is an experienced aviation professional with 28 years experience across the industry. With an academic background in environmental decision making and economics and education in flight operations, safety, and quality management, she brings a blend of expertise to the field of aviation.
Andrea began her career in general aviation in 1995 in flight operations and project management. In 2002, she joined Austro Control, initially serving as a Search and Rescue Officer. In 2005, she assumed the function of Corporate Quality Manager, where she led the organisation towards ISO 9001 and Single European Sky certification, in compliance with international safety, quality and security standards.
Andrea was promoted to the position of Director Safety, Security and Quality at Austro Control in 2015. In this role, she and her team are devoted to developing and implementing safety, quality and security improvement programs, promoting safety and just culture and operational risk management.
In addition to her contributions at Austro Control, Andrea has actively been involved in shaping aviation safety at a broader level. Since 2020 she has served as the co-chair of the Eurocontrol Safety Team, a collaborative platform bringing industry safety experts together to enhance safety standards and practices across Europe. Furthermore, Andrea has taken on the role of co-chair of the CANSO Safety Standing Committee, where she supports the close work with ANSPs and industry stakeholder to drive global safety initiatives.

Markus Klopf

Markus Klopf is Head of ATM Portfolio and International Affairs for the Air Traffic Management (ATM) division at Frequentis and has over 20 years of global experience in the telecommunications and IT sector. He is involved in international organizations such as CANSO and ATCA and is co-founder of the ATCA Young Aviation Professionals (YAP). In CANSO he’s part of the SISC Steering Group and Co-chair of the Strategic Technology Working Group. Markus has played a key role in growing the Frequentis portfolio in ATM, for example, he championed the creation of Frequentis’ drone strategy, worked on the transition from research to products for SWIM as well as growing the remote digital tower business. His credo is that he wants to make the world a better place, which is why he’s been very active in pushing green ATM solutions for many years. Prior to Frequentis, Markus held various commercial and technical positions at the Swedish telecoms company Ericsson. He has an engineering degree and earned his Master’s degree in Marketing and Sales at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna, Austria. He is a passionate runner, cyclist, tennis player and certified chair umpire and referee.

Javier Ruano

I have expent all my profesional life in Air Traffic Management, starting as software developer and systems engineer. Moved to management, initially as project manager leading today to the whole ATM business.

Nozipho Mdawe

Ms Nozipho Portia Mdawe was appointed as permanent CE of AT NS on 1 April 2022. She is the second black African woman to be appointed in this role within the company, marking a significant and historic milestone in the South African aviation history.

With over twenty-eight (28) years of professional working experience, Ms Mdawe has a strong history of orchestrating operational excellence in the Freight, Maritime, Aviation, Mining, Logistics and Supply Chain industries.

Ms Mdawe holds an MBA degree, and has completed the following qualifications: Global Executive Development Program; Advanced Strategic Management Program; Transnet Executive Women Development Program in Operations & Logistics Management and Management Advanced Program.

Tim Arel

As Chief Operating Officer of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, Timothy L. Arel is responsible for ensuring safe, efficient and secure air traffic services for approximately 50,000 aircraft operating every day over nearly 30 million square miles across the National Airspace System NAS.

Claudia Bacco

Claudia Bacco is Editor for Air Traffic Management magazine, part of the Key Publishing portfolio of publications.
She joined the magazine in this role in January 2020 and led the redesign and refocus of editorial topics. ATM goes beyond the control tower to touch on connected aspects of the modern aviation industry, such as telecommunications, networks and data management. UTM/UAM now carry a headline position in the editorial coverage of ATM, including the importance of the telecom service provider role for connectivity and services to the UAS/UAM aircraft.
In addition to her editorial expertise, Claudia has a wealth of corporate marketing, branding & positioning experience within technology companies such as Nokia, Juniper Networks and Frequentis. She brings 20 + years of high tech B2B marketing expertise. Thought leader – published editor and industry conference speaker.

Thomas Romig

Thomas Romig joined Airports Council International World in November 2020 as Vice President Safety, Security and Operations. He heads up all advocacy efforts and programme areas related to airport operations – ranging from Airside Safety, Airport Capacity and Slots, through to Facilitation and Security and across into Innovation and IT. Prior to this, he held a number of senior leadership positions at Geneva Airport in Switzerland, both in Safety and then Operations.
Over the years he has been strongly involved in ICAO and EASA regulatory activities as a representative of the airport’s community through ACI. He is now the nominated ACI Observer on the ICAO Air Navigation Commission and a multitude of other ICAO groups.

Antonio Licu

Tony is cumulating Head of Digital Transformation Office and Head of Operational Safety, SQS and Integrated Risk management Safety (NMD/SAF) Unit within Network Manager Directorate of EUROCONTROL (European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation). He leads the deployment of safety management and human factors programmes of EUROCONTROL. He has extensive Air Traffic Control operational and engineering background (master degree in avionics).

Tony’s role as head of DTO (the organisational vehicle driving the Digital Transformation of Eurocontrol Network Manager) is to manage technology, innovation and Digital Transformation for iNM (integrated Network Manager Programme) in close cooperation with EUROCONTROL organisational entities and the industrial partners.

Safety Culture and Just Culture are two key areas, where Tony’s aim is to clarify and promote the concepts. In this respect, he leads the initiative to bring together the aviation and judiciary domains. He has particular technical personal developments e.g. safety tools and methods to investigate aviation incidents and accidents, how to mitigate and work under degraded modes of operations and development of contingency plans etc.

In the past years together with his team, Tony is pushing a paradigm change in Safety management thinking. Safety management should move from ensuring that ‘as few things as possible go wrong’ to ensuring that ‘as many things as possible go right’. This perspective is termed Safety-II or rather System Thinking and relates to the system’s ability to succeed under varying conditions. The foundation for that is System focus. Safety must be considered in the context of the overall system, not isolated individuals, parts, events or outcomes.

Swaminathan Subramanian

Mr. Subramanian has an extensive career in aviation, serving as the Executive Director Administration at AAI CHQ and an Ex-Officio Board Member at NFTI, Gondia since September 1, 2023. Prior to this, he held the position of General Manager Air Traffic Services at AAI CHQ from November 2, 2020, to August 31, 2023. His experience includes technical expertise in the Indian Delegation at ICAO, where he served as an ANC State Observer and Alternate ICAO Council member. Swaminathan Subramanian has played key roles in drafting significant documents such as the “AAI Training Policy” and the “Manual on Flexible Use of Airspace, India Version 1.0.” His leadership extends to various committees and conferences at both national and international levels, showcasing his contributions to civil-military cooperation, fatigue risk management, and project management.

Midori Tanino

Ms. Tanino currently leads the CADENA initiative as the FAA Program Manager. CADENA implements the regional ATFM/CDM and airspace optimization in the Latin Americas and Caribbean region. She also serves CANSO Aviation Data Exchange Network for Cooperative Excellence (CADENCE) Task Force as a co-chair. In the past, she led the initial deployment of Flight Information Exchange Model (FIXM) and FAA Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS). She is the original creator of many ATFM decision support tools such as Flight Schedule Monitor (FSM), Flight Schedule Analyzer (FSA), Route Management Tool (RMT), Airport Arrival Demand Chart (AADC), and OpsNet. She also leads the ICAO’s Aviation System Block Upgrade (ASBU) implementation efforts in FAA and ICAO North America, Central America, and Caribbean (NACC) region.