Continuing our new series of coverage from Airspace World 2026.
Early in the morning at Airspace World 2026, away from the exhibition floor, forty young aviation professionals gathered over coffee for an interactive discussion with five of the industry’s senior leaders. No slides. Just the kind of conversation that rarely happens at industry events and that this sector needs urgently.
The CEO Breakfast is the centrepiece of CANSO’s Tomorrow’s Voices initiative, which brings students, graduates and early-career professionals into direct contact with the people currently running the industry. The premise behind it is both simple and uncomfortable: ATM has a visibility problem. A sector that cannot be found cannot attract the talent it needs to transform.
Direct contact can change that. Not brochures or recruitment campaigns, but a conversation at a breakfast table with senior leaders who have built decades of careers in airspace management and are willing to talk honestly about what that actually required.
A place for every talent
The five executives reflected the range of experience to be found within the ATM community. What united them was not only passion for the sector but a shared embrace of change as well as opportunity, curiosity about new technologies, and a conviction that people are the key driver of innovation. Mark Cooper, CEO and president of NAV CANADA brought the perspective of one of the world’s complex ANSPs. Monika Haselbacher, COO of Frequentis represented the technology supplier side. Dr Rita Somogyi, Managing Director of Tern Systems Hungary, sponsor of this year’s breakfast, spoke from the vantage point of a specialist ATM company. Maartje van der Helm of LVNL, Chair of the CANSO Operations Standing Committee, added European ANSP and governance insight. Meanwhile, Mario Kunovec-Varga, CEO of Croatia Control, shared the realities of a mid-sized European provider navigating modernisation. The informal discussion was moderated by Marita Lintener, Global Airspace Radar editor and president of the International Aerospace Women’s Association.
There is no single pathway: each professional journey is different – from engineering to MBAs, careers across various companies and changing continents. This was a clear encouragement to the young audience to follow fluid professional pathways, with their own varied backgrounds spanning AI architecture, engineering and psychology. The CEO’s message was clear: “There is a place for everybody in ATM. We need all talents. We need your fresh and bold approaches.”
Challenging the C-suite
What the young professionals asked was revealing – and direct. The personal questions cut straight to what a career in ATM actually requires. What shaped your path? What would you do if you were starting today? These were the questions of people who understand that decisions made early carry consequences for decades, and who wanted honest answers. The answers were equally bold: “Trust in yourself”, “challenge your leaders”, and consistent encouragement to keep asking questions and challenging the status quo. The executives were candid about workplace realities: “It happens that you do not get along well with your manager. Try hard, but if it does not work, look for opportunities in another department. Dare to change and stay engaged.” The recommendation to seek mentors and sponsors came from across the board.
The technical questions were equally demanding. Several participants pushed directly on artificial intelligence in safety-critical environments – not the conceptual debate, but the operational reality. How do you build trust in a new system when its output conflicts with a controller’s instinct? Active change management was the clear answer. On AI more broadly, the message from the C-suite was unambiguous: AI is increasingly embedded across all applications, but the human in the loop remains essential. “I am happy to give a lifetime job guarantee to every ATCO I hire,” one of the executives said. “Their role will change and their skills must evolve, but we will need them regardless.”
The moment that may shape a career
The CEO breakfast is central to CANSO’s People and Skills theme at Airspace World. The questions the young participants raised are not the questions of people uncertain about whether to join the industry. They are the questions of people already thinking like professionals, already wrestling with the problems the sector faces, already forming positions.
What Tomorrow’s Voices does – what the CEO breakfast does specifically – is make that engagement visible to the leaders who were keen to listen. The boldness and openness of the discussion was greatly received by the executives as well as by the next generation themselves.
The forty people in that room may well be among those deciding, over the next few years, where the ATM industry is heading. Several will be in leading positions in ANSPs, technology companies and regulatory bodies within two decades. The quality of the conversation they had over breakfast in Lisbon will have been part of their decision to join the sector.
