On July 23, 2026, the International Air Transport Association named Saadia Zahidi its next director general, making her the first woman to lead the airline trade body in its roughly 80-year history. She will take over on November 1, 2026, becoming IATA’s ninth director general. She succeeds Willie Walsh, whose term ends on July 31.
Who Saadia Zahidi Is
Zahidi joins IATA from the World Economic Forum, where she is a managing director and sits on the managing board. At the forum she founded and led its Centre for the New Economy and Society and created its Future of Jobs and Global Gender Gap reports.
She is a Swiss and Pakistani economist and the author of a book on women in the workforce. Notably, she comes from outside the airline industry, unlike her predecessor. Her selection after a formal search signals that IATA wants leadership steeped in economics and global policy, not just airline operations.
A Gap Before She Starts
Walsh, the former British Airways and IAG chief executive, leaves at the end of July, three months before Zahidi arrives. To bridge the gap, IATA has appointed its chief financial officer, Sandrine Le Borgne, as interim director general.
IATA is the main global trade association for airlines. It represents most of the world’s biggest airlines, more than 370 carriers that account for around 85% of global air traffic, and it sets industry standards on everything from airline safety to sustainable aviation fuel and ticketing.
The Job Ahead
Zahidi takes over an industry that is profitable again but under pressure. IATA has committed the sector to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, a goal that depends on scaling up alternative fuel that remains scarce and expensive.
Fuel makers supply only a tiny fraction of what airlines would need, and the cost gap with ordinary jet fuel is still wide. She will also inherit long-running fights over airport costs, consumer rules and slow aircraft deliveries, plus the push to modernize air traffic control.
IATA board chair Roberto Alvo said Zahidi “brings the right skills to effectively articulate what our industry needs to continue connecting people and economies safely, efficiently, and sustainably.”
Zahidi called aviation “critical infrastructure for economic growth” and said her top priority would be to “build aviation’s future together” with the industry.
A first for IATA
Zahidi will be IATA’s ninth director general and the first woman to hold the post since the body was formed in 1945.
Her appointment from outside the airline world is itself a signal. IATA has picked a policy and economics specialist at a moment when aviation’s hardest problems, from climate to labor, are as much political as operational.
Sources and references used for research and fact-checking.