The Director of Aviation in the United Kingdom’s department of transport has lauded India on the number of female pilots and the implementation of Digi Yatra.
Rannia Leontaridi, the Director of Aviation and Director General of Civil Aviation (UK), was sharing her views on March 22 on ‘designing a future-proof aviation & airports system’ at the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2023 in New Delhi.
Digi Yatra app links a traveller’s boarding pass to a facial recognition system that confirms their identification. It was developed by the Digi Yatra Foundation and the Ministry of Civil Aviation to support contactless passenger identification at airports.
Leontaridi said the Digi Yatra is a phenomenal step by the government. She also said, “I am jealous of the number of female pilots in India. We are a little behind.”
Suggesting ways on how the UK and Indian governments can collaborate to accomplish goals, she said, “Regulation and policy should be about consumers more because aviation is for customers… Customer charter to inform pax about rights was the first thing that came out of COVID in the UK. Other critical things were Digitisation, innovation, and decarbonization. We realised we have a difficult future ahead of us.”
Customer-centric plans, digitisation of services such as innovation and technology, and decarbonisation are other key learnings during the pandemic and recovery path for the aviation industry, Leontaridi said.
