Message from the Chairman
The challenges for skeyes and our strengths to overcome them
At the beginning of 2022, a new Board of Directors was installed at skeyes. I have the honour of chairing a team of enthusiastic directors, managers and employees with experience in various areas, who will all contribute to the future development of skeyes.
This editorial is an opportunity for me to thank our predecessors for the work carried out in complex circumstances, with the health crisis having complicated the last few years of their term of office. Nevertheless, they have put in place stable foundations on which skeyes develops as a company.
The new Board of Directors will continue to support skeyes in carrying out its missions of being a reliable partner, a modern employer, and a future-oriented company. To this end, we intend to strengthen the organisation in order to consolidate operational activities and carry out future projects initiated in the past.
While we are aware of the challenges that our ambitions bring, we are convinced that skeyes is up to the task, due to its commitment, maturity, creativity, flexibility and skills. This is clear from just a few examples.
skeyes is continuously improving the services provided to its customers, and to the aviation sector in its entirety, in order to maintain Belgian airspace and airports safe and attractive, both operationally and economically. This is partly in the context of the Single European Sky and future liberalisation of the air traffic control market. Indeed, while skeyes operates in a highly competitive international environment, it has been preparing for this new impending reality for a long time.
skeyes wants to be a loyal partner for all its stakeholders. Air traffic control is a vital link in Belgian aviation, the second most important pillar of the country’s economy. But we are also playing our full social role. Ecologically, we are investing in operational procedures, in new technologies for our facilities and in applications for everyday life at our various sites to promote and integrate sustainability within all aspects of our operations. In this way, we are reconciling the economy and ecology in the interest of local residents around our airports as well as for the good of the planet.
In the field of Unmanned Aviation, it is no exaggeration to say that skeyes is a true pioneer. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that the European Commission is relying on the expertise of skeyes - acquired via use cases - to establish the regulations for the use of drones.
The primary mission of the Board of Directors for this year will be to create a framework in which skeyes can develop in the medium and long term, by, among other things, concluding a new (fourth) management contract with the federal government. The amendments to the third management contract at the end of last year were already heading in the direction in which skeyes has committed itself, namely towards a financially stable position, after the difficult years following the health crisis and towards even more commitments in terms of the sustainability of aviation.
We will also closely follow the discussions between the Belgian government and the European Commission on Reference Period 3 (RP3). The directives in this multi-year plan will structurally determine the financial and operational conditions for skeyes’ activities at European level.
The stakes are therefore considerable. However, skeyes has already shown itself to be resistant and resilient in the past. We have the vision, the experience, and the people to succeed in our objectives in the interest of the company and all our stakeholders. I can count on us!