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ECA welcomes the appointment of Patrick Ky as the future Executive Director of the European Aviation Safety Agency.

“We are confident that Mr Ky’s wealth of professional experience in aviation will be an asset for EASA”, says Nico Voorbach, ECA President. “Improving aviation safety is a common goal of both Europe’s professional airline pilots and EASA. We already successfully cooperate on a significant number of safety issues, such as flight crew licensing, flight standards and air operations, Air Traffic Management, airport design and engineering and helicopter safety. We’re looking forward to working together with Mr Ky and to expanding our cooperation, particularly in view of the many challenges for safety posed by the difficult economic environment, fierce competition in the aviation market, and scarce resources to ensure an effective safety oversight at national and European level. Broad issues like performance-based regulation and oversight will be as important as specific ones like ensuring pilots are trained adequately both today and tomorrow, as demonstrated by the ‘Pilot Training Compass’ we just issued.” 

Nico Voorbach also took the opportunity to thank Mr Patrick Goudou, EASA’s Executive Director since its creation in September 2003: “On behalf of ECA and our Member Associations, I would like to thank Mr Goudou for his efforts to strengthen EASA and build a strong and independent European safety agency. He provided the basis for his successor to build upon, to ensure that aviation safety will always be at the centre of Europe’s aviation-related initiatives.”

Mr Patrick Ky will take office on 1 September 2013 and is currently the Executive Director of the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) Joint Undertaking. Prior to that, he held different managerial positions in the French Civil Aviation Authority and EUROCONTROL.