There has been some speculation about where and when the IATA yearly mandated meeting of member airline cargo executives, now branded ‘The World Cargo Symposium (WCS)’ that just concluded last week in Dublin, Ireland, might be held in 2022?
     People we spoke to say the event could be conducted any time, but odds makers bet mid-year next.
     But where will the venue be?
     Will the brass ring go to Seoul or Hong Kong; or somewhere in the U.S. or maybe even Doha or Dubai?
     Perhaps WCS might finally get back to where it once belonged, this year/next year, at Istanbul?
     Or will it be Europe again or maybe Latin America could be an IATA showstopper.
     Looking at these things through the bottom of the Jameson shot glass awaiting departure from DUB, were are told that Hong Kong, as example, post-COVID, “is still a mess for travel.
     “But the government desperately wants to open the border with the mainland which has been closed for so long and which is so critical to Hong Kong's economy that they will jump through hoops to get the nod from up north.
     “There is also certainly a great deal of frustration amongst companies about the super strict quarantine rules which require pretty well anybody coming from anywhere to spend three weeks in hotel quarantine, which is clearly not possible for most kinds of travel.”
     But we also hear that The World Rugby Football Union has recently announced the 2022 Rugby 7’s tournament dates with HK firmly on the schedule for April 1-3 2022.
     So maybe, the ruggers know something we don’t?
     We learned as DUB WCS closed last week that it was Istanbul that pulled out of WCS, moving IATA to Dublin at the last minute.
     Apparently the Turks decided that they could live without negative publicity and possible lawsuits if attendees of WCS IST (God forbid) were struck with COVID.
     So they bailed.
     Kudos to the IATA Cargo team for pivoting quite deftly with an impossibly short window to making sure that the show went on!
     Meantime as the latest IATA Head of Cargo, Brendan Sullivan pictured here in all his sartorial splendor did his meet and greet and speechifyng at the WCS Dublin all week, some eventually wondered:
     Where will “Sullivan's Travels”, (also title of one of the best films of 1941) be staged in 2022?
GDA