CAA board member steps down over IAG conflict of interest
A member of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was forced to step following a conflict of interest, the aviation regulator announced yesterday.
A former British Airways’ (BA) director of engineering, Garry Copeland resigned after a CAA audit of the members’ financial interest found he was holding some shares in BA’s parent company IAG instead of an IAG or BA pension scheme.
“It is with regret that we have not been able to resolve a potential conflict of interest to our mutual satisfaction,” the CAA said in a statement on Monday.
Copeland was brought on board in September 2021 as a non-executive director to help the CAA with its “strategic safety objectives,” and his appointment was signed off by transport secretary Grant Shapps, sources told the Telegraph.
Copeland’s resignation comes a month after Heathrow’s boss John Holland-Kaye was forced to step down from a Department for Transport’s (DfT) panel, CityAM reported.
Holland-Kaye was among those in charge of choosing the next director general of aviation, maritime and security industries but quit after several airlines said his presence tainted the impartiality process.
The chief executive’s presence was seeing as generating a conflict of interest as the director general would oversee the sector competitiveness, including that of Heathrow.