Talent Development and Workforce Resilience: Tackling Latin America’s Aviation Challenges

Transcript

Michael Bell:Well, I love when we talk about people. It's my favorite subject, and we have 4 incredible people on stage with me here. The topic is talent development, workforce resilience. I'll introduce the panel from your far right, if I can see to my far right. Here we go. Karen Barahona, who is the Vice President of Human Resources From COPA here in Panama. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Barahona:Thank you.

Michael Bell:Fairly new in your role too, about a year, right?

Karen Barahona:Yeah, a year.

Michael Bell:Yeah, congratulations. Welcome to the industry.

Karen Barahona:Thank you.

Michael Bell:Next to her, Jason Ward, VP of Marketing People at Azul. Known Jason a long time, founder of Azul from the US, but spent quite a bit of time in Brazil and a great leader in our industry as well. Next to him, another longtime acquaintance, Renato Covelo, who is the Chief People and Talent Officer for Avianca here next door. Hello, Renato. Originally from Brazil, actually, but started in the legal arena and somehow found his way into human resources and stuck and has done a great job leading Avianca.

Jason Ward:Founder of Azul someday.

Renato Covelo:Founder of Azul as well. That's true.

Michael Bell:And then Ivanna Lajara. Welcome, Ivanna.

Ivanna Lajara:Thank you.

Michael Bell:Who is also fairly new in her capacity as the VP of Culture, Human Resources Management at Arajet, a fast-growing carrier here in the Caribbean. We heard a little bit about the airline from some of the other executives who are here. So welcome to the industry and to the panel.

Renato Covelo:Thank you.

Michael Bell:So we're going to start with a subject that is impacting all our lives, AI and its implication for the people, human capital function. You know, there was a resignation from Anthropic this week. I'm not sure if you saw that in the press. And this guy said, you know, our leaders are not paying attention to the risks associated with AI. And he said there's a greater than 10% probability that AI won't just replace people, but will eliminate humanity within the next 10 years. So my question for you guys, not that that should bias your thinking, is—

Karen Barahona:Yeah.

Michael Bell:And I want the answer in one word and to Typical Michael Bell fashion, one word only, right? AI and human capital, threat or opportunity? Karen?

Karen Barahona:Opportunity.

Michael Bell:Opportunity.

Karen Barahona:Definitely.

Michael Bell:I like that optimistic attitude. Jason?

Jason Ward:Opportunity.

Michael Bell:Okay. Renato?

Renato Covelo:Opportunity with caution.

Michael Bell:With caution? Okay. Yeah, you snuck extra word in there. One word, I know. Violation, you're off the stage. All right, Ivanna?

Ivanna Lajara:Opportunity.

Renato Covelo:Oh, wow.

Michael Bell:Okay, we got an optimistic group. I have to ask you why you feel that way. And I'm going to start with you, Renato. When in our prep session you mentioned that as a company there's a lot of pressure or expectation that you guys deploy AI. So how are you looking at AI as an opportunity or mitigating the threat within your job?

Renato Covelo:Yeah, I think that we need to separate these into different topics. One is how to use AI on our daily basis and our procedures, processes, how we can eliminate Excel charts and use AI for salary calculations and other things that we can have more, use AI to better do our jobs. Another thing is how we do use AI not to do our jobs. That's true. It's too late.

Michael Bell:To lessen the job, if you will.

Renato Covelo:Yeah, because today I see people and I have this example at my house with my kids. Everything for them is AI. They just given a weird example. My daughter, she took a picture of the washing machine and how to use that washing machine, and Claude gave all the details where to put the soap, where to do that. So those things, when you use this at work for people doing memos, reviewing lawsuits that we have a lot in our region and not taking care of the details, just let AI to do everything. That's what I'm concerned. That's what I don't like. But the other hand, if you have a tool like Harvey, this wonderful tool from legal that you can have Harvey analyzing a lawsuit and giving you all the details where you need to go. But if you don't check the details, that's my— that's the duality that we have here, how to use it and make this productive and helping people to do better their jobs and how people are using and relying a lot on AI.

Michael Bell:Yeah.

Renato Covelo:and not doing their job. That's the—

Michael Bell:Over-relying on AI.

Renato Covelo:Over-relying on AI. That's the balance that we need to find.

Michael Bell:I did use it on my oven, which broke down. It did not work, by the way. It's not always foolproof. Karen, jump in here. As a relative newcomer to the airline industry, you're faced with a very well-performing company with this challenge of how to deploy AI. What are you guys doing at Copa this week?

Karen Barahona:I think we are doing it. We're managing where we want to implement AI very cautiously, as Renato said, because, you know, the token economy and everything is in place. So we have to take that in consideration. But we also think that AI is helping to gather better information, you know, gather insights. So it allows people to have more time to analyze those and bring those insights into the decision-making process and making better decisions, and also to focus our people on those things that technology cannot replace, like the human interaction, the service, the hospitality, and all of that.

Michael Bell:I'm curious as to whether you believe your workforce sees it that way or not. Maybe, Jason, pick up on this one. You guys just went through a Chapter 11 restructuring, came out successfully the other end, but probably people were a little nervous through that. There's talk about, well, AI liberates employees to do higher-value work, but on the other hand, there's like, yeah, it's eliminating some of the work or automating it in a very efficient manner. What is the feeling within Azul today about AI? Is there a wariness or a threat feeling around it?

Jason Ward:I think there is something to be said about executives making comments about, oh, AI, we're doing this. They're reducing headcount 10%. But the question is, why? What did they do? I think that's where we've kind of let the headlines pass and then try to understand what exactly did company ABC do with AI. And a lot of times you find there's no details. It's just they're saying we used it. But I think what we're trying to say is, you know, the— I call it the 3 phases of resistance. The first is, I don't understand this. I don't understand this. I don't understand this at all. Then the second phase is, I don't like this. This is going to take our jobs. This is going to do this. This is going to do that. Then the third thing is, I don't like you. We have to be careful that we're not putting that much pressure on them. I don't think AI is going to replace us, but it's going to be that if we don't use to learn AI to our benefit, then we could be replaced. I'm old enough to know when the internet started. The resistance that was there. There are a lot of things that we can be using it for, so I think try to dumb it down a little bit and just say, how can I use it in these areas? But don't make it the talk of the company to where people get stressed out because that's all we can talk about.

Michael Bell:Ivanna, you're a growth-oriented company. You mentioned you've gone from 300-something to 1,000 people in a year. So that's exciting.

Ivanna Lajara:Yes.

Michael Bell:But how are you guys thinking about this? Is it enabling your growth or what's the deployment?

Ivanna Lajara:So it's definitely enabling our growth. And in our, let's see, in our HR function, we've used it heavily in 2 ways. So first, this year we onboarded and welcomed an AI team member. He's an agent that—

Michael Bell:What's his name or her name?

Ivanna Lajara:Bender Rodriguez. Okay.

Renato Covelo:Yes.

Ivanna Lajara:So he has all of our policies, procedures, rule books, culture book, everything. He knows what he needs to know about the company and everything we do. So he saves us a lot of time to answer—

Michael Bell:He's the first point of contact for employees if they have a question HR-related.

Ivanna Lajara:Yes. And then second, regarding recruiting, because we've grown so fast and we continue to grow, As you mentioned, last year we were at 400 and today we're at 1,000 employees and we expect another, as Garrett mentioned yesterday, 50% growth next year. So we implemented an AI-first recruiting applicant tracking system this year. And then company-wide, I know because we are expected to use these tools and to make our work more efficient and cost-effective, We've been also using it in IROPS, revenue management. The technology team has always been, kind of always been using it. So it's very— we are welcoming towards it.

Michael Bell:How often, what's the usage of AI in applicant tracking at the rest of the airlines represented here? Renato, you guys deploy it?

Renato Covelo:And same, we created an AI committee at Avianca because we have all the IRS asking for AI, ask our IT teams, and we receive a lot of information, a lot of emails from companies all over the world saying, look, we have the best AI opportunity for you. So to avoid silos and people doing their own AI things, so we created this AI committee that is led by Fernando Lara, our CIO, where we analyze all the possibilities that we can have in revenue, in finance, HR.

Michael Bell:It's like an IT steering committee almost, but for AI.

Renato Covelo:To make sure we are using the very best technology that we can And organize it across the organization. I mean, that's avoiding people hiring different tools that they will conflict in the future and make sure they're investing, because there's a lot of investment that we need to do in things that will work and will make the operation or our capabilities better in a very organized way. So because that is a lot of things and a lot of new technologies arriving on a everyday basis. So we try to organize the ideas under one umbrella that is the RACIO.

Michael Bell:Is it working?

Renato Covelo:It is, it is. Because, and when we receive emails from organizations and we're going to see the details, it's more of the same. I mean, that is nothing new, that is nothing that will add capabilities or will add—

Michael Bell:Is it also helping to set, let's say, I mean, one of the comments made about this disgruntled employee was that there's no guardrails, right? Is it helping to set some guardrails about how we use AI, where we do, where we don't, what the policy? I'd be interested in maybe, Renato, you answered that and others can come in with their thoughts on that. Renato? Sorry. Karen, why don't you go?

Karen Barahona:I think I'm very well aligned with what my peers have said here. Governance is one of the critical issues that I think we as an industry and Actually, globally, we have to think about how we govern the AI usage and what we're putting there and having that governance in place. We also are doing a lot of benchmark with not only in the industry, but also outside the industry with those that are more advanced in the use of AI so we can learn from them and use those best practices.

Renato Covelo:Jason?

Jason Ward:Yeah, I think one thing, Renato mentioned about doing the committee there, is brainstorming or saying, what's the best practice that we're doing? Instead of a competition, say, how can we help each other? One of the things we did also was using the intelligence, and we built a system internally where our crew members— we call all of our employees crew members, but 15,000. What they can do is they can upload their CV, their resume, or they can connect their LinkedIn profile. It'll go through and match all of our internal job opportunities. It'll give them a good, where are these options that you have, and then also where are the gaps. We hook that up with our university to say, here's a bunch of different training that you can do to prepare for this job, or you didn't make it to this, you didn't qualify. We're trying to use the technologies and intelligence to help them in their own careers advancing within the company.

Michael Bell:Do you guys, Ivanna, extend that to internal employees to see where they're We haven't yet, but that's a great idea. That's the next step.

Ivanna Lajara:Yeah, that's a great idea.

Michael Bell:I'm curious around the 3 phases of resistance. Typically, fear is driven by the unknown. It's dark. I don't know what's in this room. Have you guys approached AI with your workforce to give them the tools and say, use this, try this, so that anxiety level goes down and they see it as an aid versus a threat? I mean, you raised the question, you guys are trying to, I guess, decide, or maybe you did, around the policy around licensing. What is the approach at COPA that way?

Karen Barahona:I think the approach of our workforce is mostly like with curiosity and optimism about AI and what it can bring to their jobs. From COPA's standpoint, like the company, I think what we are doing is to train Everybody who wants to be trained in AI and like the basic tools that are there so they get familiar with it and they know that it's not a threat but actually an opportunity. And so that, the training our team, talking about it as a productivity enhancement tool instead of a people replacement or, you know, substitution. And I think it's working pretty well. You can see a lot of employees in the company being curious about it, experimenting with that, and in some other areas, like really taking it to the next level of, as my peers here mentioned.

Michael Bell:Ivanna, I guess their fear is maybe lower in a growth situation because you guys need people versus trying to cut back, but what is your philosophy about putting the tool into the hands of everybody, especially in an AI-first type of context?

Ivanna Lajara:So we work together with the IT team to make sure first that whatever we try to put out there and share or promote is safe and that there's clear communication on how to use it, when to use it, and sessions or small groups about relative to your work and in your job, like how can these tools or AI-first tools support you?

Michael Bell:Yeah.

Ivanna Lajara:support you. And then we also do have training sessions. They are co-led by HR and IT. So it's more of a— and I have to say, we also have young talent. So sometimes IT and HR are the ones that say, okay, but let's look at this together, because people are like—

Michael Bell:They're ahead of you.

Ivanna Lajara:Yes, I'm using this. I'm trying this. So we try to govern and look at how this can be helpful and safe. Super.

Michael Bell:Well, let's go to another topic area, which is supply-demand shortages, if they exist. You can bring AI into the conversation because it might be helpful that way. Renato, I'm going to start with you on this one. I remember we were on a panel, I think it might have been Calgary or something like that, another CAPA panel.

Ivanna Lajara:Yeah, Calgary.

Michael Bell:At the time, you were facing some challenges relative to pilot recruitment. They were being taken away to the US, given some of the regulation changes, or the Gulf. How is the situation today? Is it stabilized?

Renato Covelo:Now it's much better than we talked back in 2023, that it was when especially the US created this new visa for pilots. When you compare salaries, safety, living in the US from our region, that makes a lot of pilots desire to go to the US. Middle East will always be there with ups and downs. Sometimes they need more pilots, Of course, this is something that we can't compete. We can't compete with salaries in the US sometimes and with these crazy exchange rates that go up and down every time. 2023, we lost a lot of pilots, especially to the US and cargo carriers that they were hiring a lot of Latins. But now I think it's more stabilized because the US market now is also stabilized. That is not a problem right now, but we always have these recruitments, these sessions in Bogotá, São Paulo, people coming from Middle East and Asia coming to offer jobs there. And of course, there's sometimes— São Paulo?

Michael Bell:Especially young— Okay. How does the picture look in Azul? You guys went through a Chapter 11 process, so you obviously have to do some cutbacks and regrow, if you will. How's the supply-demand picture look for your workforce?

Jason Ward:I think, just to clarify, people come to São Paulo to recruit, just like they do in the US.

Ivanna Lajara:Yeah, that's what I heard.

Karen Barahona:Yeah, yeah.

Jason Ward:No, I think, you know, it's the same thing. You know, Brazilians love Brazil. You know, so do Americans. We like Brazil as well. But, you know, it's— you're always going to have the, you know, the Middle East come in. They offer them a job for 3 years to go. Do that. That'll continue to happen, but the job market has been very stable for us as far as pilots. During the pandemic, during the Chapter 11 process, the flying was way down, obviously, and so our flight attendants and pilots took a pay cut to do that. A lot of absences— what are they called? Leave of absences. I was trying to think in English. Leave of absences. Leave of absences. That we've tried to help. But I think the big thing for us is to really— communication with our transparency and communication with our crew members to make sure that they understand we can share as much as we possibly can, being a publicly held company, with them about what is happening at the company, what are the plans. We can't give them 100% guarantee, but at least have open dialogue in a formal setting, whether it's a live or—

Ivanna Lajara:Yeah.

Jason Ward:A Teams call, or it's just the informal going out and talking. Every time we fly, we go into the cockpit and talk to the pilots, talk to the crew members. When Renato was there, he was the pilot's best friend, talking to them all the time. I think keeping the communication open, salary compensation is a big deal. At the same time, what we found as well is just because they can go make more money somewhere else doesn't make them a happier person as well. Understanding that and welcoming people back when they do come back, I think that's the best thing, is taking an interest in the person as well.

Michael Bell:Thank you. Karen, you guys don't have a big domestic, let's say, supply base to draw on, so you have to necessarily go outside. Are you trying to build your own partnership with institutions, etc., or what is the approach to make sure you've got the You guys have a lot of airplanes coming and growth, right?

Karen Barahona:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, well, as you can see, Panama is a relatively small country, and we serve the Americas from the hub of the Americas, so it's a challenge to get the talent we need in Panama. What we have done is to create our own academies. We have an aviation academy. A pilot academy and an aviation technicians academy. We kind of graduate around 100 pilots every year, about 60 technicians, and it takes about 2 to 4 years to prepare them, the latter. So it has been an effort to create that environment for them to be part— to want to be part of the industry and see this as a career. And so we go to schools to talk about the aviation industry and how fascinating it is and bringing talent to this school so they are familiar with it and they recognize that as a profession they can pursue and be part of COPA. I think that it served both areas or both sides of the equation, right? Both the the company and the country because it's an opportunity for young talented professionals to be part of a growing and a passionate company.

Michael Bell:Pedro said that the 2 most iconic employers are COPA and the canal, right?

Karen Barahona:Yeah.

Michael Bell:Does that help that you guys are seen to be— you're not just at the periphery of— you're not secondary to the tech sector, but you're a prime employer here?

Karen Barahona:Absolutely. Well, we employ about 9,000 employees in the country. So it's a very big company for the country. And I think we're doing a lot of investment, not only with our academies, but also partnering with schools and institutions like the university and specific institutions, both like high schools, to prepare those students as technicians. It's becoming more appealing for young kids to be part of it. They see this as a great opportunity, not only for themselves, for the community as well.

Michael Bell:Ivanna, the Dominican for many years had no national carrier effectively. It disappeared. You don't have that same profile that, hey, this is the place to go work in the aviation industry. Yet you guys have doubled in size in a year.

Ivanna Lajara:How are you meeting your So our approach has been similar to working with the government, not only in terms of recruitment and talent development, but also in terms of the regulation. And the government entities related to aviation have been growing with us. So we're working with them to develop these schools that are minimum. So we— our country graduates less than 100 aviation professionals per year, and that's to supply not only Arajet, but all of like private aviation, civil aviation, all of that, our forces, right? The government itself, where half of them probably go. So we've been working with them, local schools, local institutions, government entities, and kind of planting that seed of now it's starting to— you can start to feel that spark of people Saying, oh, I don't have to dream about being a pilot and hope I get a green card to work in the US, but now I can work for my flagship carrier. So it's about planting the seed and working together while, you know, we solve today's growth, but at the same time, we want to make sure in the future we are able to supply with our own local Dominican talent.

Michael Bell:And you have like something almost 30 nationalities represented in this relatively small company. How— and a lot of new people, a lot of young people— how are you making sure that you keep that culture together, the glue, if you will, as you grow so rapidly?

Ivanna Lajara:So that multiculturalism and that blend of 28 nationalities within just 1,000 people is part of who we are. And it's a balance between keeping the Dominican pride and the Dominican sense of identity, but at the same time knowing that it's all of us with all these 28 nationalities from all over the world building this mission together, let's say, for the purpose of the whole region and for this dream that's bigger than each of us, even as a country. And balancing that with the— I have to say, culture is something that it's CEO-driven. And in our country, culture is in the CEO's agenda. It's, you know, Supported by him, and people know it. Everyone knows that keeping who we are and letting people know who we are and having people identify with that, it's top-down and it's something we reinforce daily.

Michael Bell:You're fortunate. For those who've met Victor Pacheco, he's a wonderful, very charismatic personality that way. Let's move to another topic. I call it the work-from-anywhere paradox. I'm fortunate I can do that. I remember Renato coming down to try to see you guys, I don't know, 5 or 6 years ago. I wanted to stay at the Hyatt, come pay you a visit, and you guys said, well, there's not going to be many people in the office, just a few of us. What is your policy around that today? How are you getting people back in to work from the office if, in fact, that's what you want them to do?

Renato Covelo:We still have this policy, 3 per 2, 3 days in the office and 2 at home, but we keep encouraging people to return to the office. Probably, we With our last review, it's 3.4. People are going 3 point— in an average, 3.4 days a week to the office, sometimes 3, sometimes 4, sometimes 5. But as it is, we work a lot trying to measure productivity. How you see if they are more productive at home or working? What is the net effect? It's very interesting. For some areas like legal, they prefer and they are much more productive working from home because what they do is read documents, read contracts, review lawsuits. In Bogotá, the traffic is terrible, so spend 2, 3 hours in the car going to the office when you can stay at home reviewing and producing documents. For certain areas, we permitted the reverse, 3 days at home, 2 days at office. For other areas, like we need like revenue management, like commercial, that you need to be together with your peers, then we are encouraging them to be more at the office. So that's— we are still very flexible, but we are still seeing what we, for the next year, what would be our new policy.

Michael Bell:Jason, what's your guys' approach at Azul on this one?

Jason Ward:Yeah, I think, you know, we Our culture is people, and so we prefer to have the interaction. You miss out a lot. Our big thing is each director, he or she, is responsible for their team, and so they measure their productivity, how they're doing that. Typically, what we've found is those who are looking to advance in the company or those who are— they want to be there, they want to be a part of that, and we try to take the focus on— People. What is the rule? What's the regulation you have to do? Some departments— Renato mentioned this too— some departments are more productive at home or they enjoy being home, but what we find is most of our senior leadership and the manager level are in the office participating and not missing out on that face-to-face. Also, if they have a commitment, if they have something they need to do, that's where the director will step in and say, no, go ahead and work from home, or you're going to do this, or I'm leaving early. I'm just going to work from home. All the way up to our VPs, a lot of times we'll just get a thing, hey, I'm working from home. In Brazil, we have a huge problem with the véspera de feriado, the night before the big holiday, or the Friday mornings, the Friday late. If you get a late start, you're going to get stuck in hours of traffic. You'd be better off having productive— There's a huge rain problem, or it's traffic. We just try to take the focus off— during the pandemic, there was so much focus on working from home to try to— it's more work, but it's more responsibility. But each director—

Renato Covelo:I don't know, Jason, if it happens. The other day, I was— we are so getting to Teams that the other day I had a meeting with 4 people. All of them were in the same building, but from Teams. So guys, are you in the building?

Jason Ward:Why?

Renato Covelo:So you're so getting to Teams that—

Jason Ward:We're in this conference.

Renato Covelo:Oh, come to my office. Let's be together.

Michael Bell:You should have a loyalty program on Teams then, right? Karen, I could be wrong here, but it strikes me that Pedro, who's done a remarkable job, is a bit old school on this and he wants people there. Is that the approach at COPA or what are you guys doing that way?

Karen Barahona:Well, we're going— senior executives are going every day. We're physically present every day and we expect administrative people working very closely to operational people to be present. Like every day. For those administrative areas that are like in the administrative building, we have a policy that is like 4 days at the office and 1 day off. But the day that we are working from home or that the people are allowed to work from home, there is a mix of people who go to the office and some others that prefer to stay at home. What we do is that we make sure that it's the same day for everybody. We maximize collaboration for the days that we are at the office.

Michael Bell:Very good. I have to imagine, Ivanna, smaller company, open-plan office, you guys are in office for the most part?

Ivanna Lajara:Yes, we are in the office, although we do have, let's say, team members who are in other parts of the world, and we try to balance that in-person and virtual. We also, like Jason mentioned, we leave— we allow each director, each leader to handle their team. Then that becomes a challenge because we have some leaders who expect you to be there in person and then others who are more flexible about it. As HR, we try to manage that and make it fun to be at the office.

Michael Bell:Why could they do that and not me?

Ivanna Lajara:Yeah.

Michael Bell:I want to take a question from the Slido for you, Renato. How do you build a common culture within Avianca in Colombia, GOL in Brazil, Abra somewhere else in the world? We heard what you guys are doing with 28 nationalities. You have a bigger challenge here.

Renato Covelo:No, one thing that is very clear at Abra Group, that we want to keep the culture of Avianca, the culture of GOL, and permit them to keep their culture. We want to have some guidelines for Abra in terms of values, in terms of what we expect from the group, people to behave and the companies to behave, but preserving and respecting the culture, the Brazilian culture at GOL, the Colombian culture, not only the Colombian, but Ecuadorian, Salvadoranian, Costa Rica. So because at Avianca, we are 7 different airlines in different countries, so we try to respect the culture, but have a guide to be guided by ABRA on what ABRA expects from all the airlines, or our people at ABRA Group now, our new friends from Chile and Peru to be in the same—

Michael Bell:Culture.

Renato Covelo:with the same guidance and what we want to achieve in 5 years as a group and what we need our behaviors and our performance to be to achieve what Abra expects for the few years, for the next few years.

Michael Bell:Take another question, which is, in terms of senior executives, do you think there's enough talent in the region to support the growth, local knowledge and Spanish-Portuguese proficiency being key factors? I think the answer is there. You just email me and we'll talk about it, right? But seriously, what is your view around that? Is there a supply issue around the right talent at the senior levels? Who wants to start? Why don't you start with that one, Jason?

Jason Ward:Yeah, I think it probably depends on which area you're talking about. I mean, there's, you know, marketing, HR, IT. I think there's Plenty of talent, all that. If you start getting more specific airline-related revenue management, network planning, I think that's becoming—

Ivanna Lajara:Tech ops.

Jason Ward:Yeah, tech ops. He helped us find our latest VP of operations maintenance. I think one of the things we were talking a little bit last night at dinner with Renato about succession planning. We talked about helping our crew members, getting them prepared. A senior executive, it's years in the making to help that person do that. Identifying talent, finding what the gaps are, and helping them to grow and develop. A big part of that too is if they're willing, if they want it. The big piece is when the student is ready, the teacher appears. As HR, we try to provide all this. We have this obligation to provide training and succession planning and all that. But if the people are not prepared and don't want it or not willing to put in the time or the effort, then it's hard. I think there is talent there in those areas that we mentioned. It's just a matter of getting them prepared for that opportunity.

Michael Bell:We can't leave the stage without talking about diversity and inclusion. We only have a few minutes left, but we're huge proponents of this. We've seen the industry in the airline world come a long way on this. I remember there was a big brouhaha at one of the IATA meetings. They took a picture of the, whatever, 270 members. There were, I think, 5 women CEOs in the audience, but we've seen that change, right? You see a lot of female CEOs in Europe now, for example, in Australia, many other places. And we see that in the C-suite here, but we haven't seen it crack the top ranks. The big airline groups haven't had a female— When are we going to see that? What's it going to take to crack that ceiling in Latin America? Who wants to take that one? Karen, interested in your views coming from outside the industry. What's holding that back?

Karen Barahona:Well, we're actually a good example of female participation across the whole company, from top directors. We have about more than 35% of female participation in the Senior executive positions.

Michael Bell:Which is higher than the target set by IATA, right?

Karen Barahona:Yeah, exactly, more than 25%. Then in pilots and technicians, we're doing a great effort. It's an intentional effort to bring more women to the industry. I think we're top also of the notch on female participation in pilots. We have about 11%, and in technicians, it's about 13% last time I checked. So we're very proud of that, and I think it's intentional, and the way we have achieved that is by making sure that women are seen from the very beginning of the process. When we go to schools, we portray female pilots, successful women in the industry, as well as technicians. And then in our recruitment process, we also make sure that there is female representation, and I think that's working well for us.

Michael Bell:It's interesting you say that. We did a study maybe 6 7 years ago with various industry associations, and we had tried to identify the 2 key inhibitors, and one of them was not seeing women in those roles. When women see other women in those positions, they visualize themselves in the role, right?

Karen Barahona:Yeah, exactly. It's like, I can do it.

Michael Bell:Who else wants to come in? Jason, you have thoughts on that?

Jason Ward:No, I think you hit a good point. The reason why we try to take our female pilots and get them involved with us in the communities and talking to the schools, and it's exactly what you just said, is, you know, even though our— we have 6% of our pilots are female, and so a lot of times when we put them on, you know, publications, all that, people may say, well, you only have 6%, why are you putting 2 female pilots? But it's exactly that reason, is we've, we've got to show that it is possible. And we're not— it's not that we're turning down female pilots, just that the Yeah, super.

Michael Bell:Ivanna?

Ivanna Lajara:I was going to add just that in our case, what we've been trying to do besides making them visible, and we have the example from our C-suite and senior leadership, even in technical roles, is that our apprenticeships and internships in the maintenance programs, we prioritize female participation and female invitations into the programs. For both mechanics and other technical roles.

Michael Bell:Super. Renato, last word on the D&I question.

Renato Covelo:No, at Avianca, we created what we call belonging. That involves everything, and we have a very nice project that we are— the same as Jason said, we ask our pilots, our female pilots, to go out there to schools and talk to people, and we have 2 very nice programs. One for female pilots. We recruited last year 30 young girls from some regions of Colombia to do from zero, from zero to be hired to Avianca in the next few months. It's been a huge success, this one. We are doing the same this year for maintenance, so create a group of women that can be prepared to be future leaders in maintenance for the company.

Michael Bell:That's great.

Renato Covelo:That's what we try to promote, and it's been a challenge, but very, very nice to do.

Michael Bell:It's great to hear that you all take it seriously and are proactively moving on that. But I walk away from this highly encouraged that the human capital leadership at these 4 great airlines is in terrific hands. You're moving things in the right direction. I'm glad that none of you raised, you know, AI as something that could displace executive search, because You know that definitely could not happen.

Jason Ward:No, never.

Michael Bell:But I thank, I thank you all. I'd ask you to join me in thanking our wonderful panel for their time today. Thank you.

Karen Barahona:Thank you.

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