Lufthansa Group carrier SWISS has just announced that a new CEO has been appointed at the airline, and it’s not necessarily who I would have expected.
Jens Fehlinger will become SWISS’ new CEO
The SWISS Board of Directors has just appointed Jens Fehlinger as the company’s new CEO as of October 1, 2024. While the 43-year-old German has been at Lufthansa Group for his entire professional career, he’s new to subsidiary SWISS. He replaces Dieter Vranckx, who is taking on new duties on the Lufthansa Group Executive Board.
Fehlinger began his career at Lufthansa Group in 2006. He was first a pilot, before holding a range of management positions, including Head of Corporate Airline Strategy & Business Development for Lufthansa, and Head of Operations Performance Management & Analytics for the Lufthansa Group. He then headed the Lufthansa Group’s crisis management office during the coronavirus pandemic.
In the past few years, Fehlinger has served as Co-Managing Director of Lufthansa CityLine, while simultaneously establishing and developing the new Lufthansa City Airlines company as Managing Director. He also holds an airline transport pilot’s license, and is an A320 pilot for Lufthansa CityLine.
Here’s how Reto Francioni, Chairman of the SWISS Board of Directors, describes this appointment:
“In Jens Fehlinger we have secured the services for our company of a genuine connoisseur of the air transport sector. He has accumulated extensive experience in various areas within the Lufthansa Group; and he has proven well able to deliver innovations in our industry. He has shown vision, strategic flair and operational expertise, along with an ability to work closely with his teams, to establish a new airline; and, in doing so, he has confirmed his capacity to guide a company to success. With his personality, too, he will fit excellently not only into our SWISS Management Board but also into our particular SWISS culture. I look forward to working with him, and I wish him every success and satisfaction in his new position.”
Meanwhile here’s how Fehlinger describes his new role:
“I am really looking forward to joining SWISS. It’s a great company that has performed outstandingly well, especially in the last few years, and that has emerged from the recent crisis as a sound and growing concern. It has achieved this above all through its dedicated, open and innovative team – a team that celebrates its Swissness with pride. This Swissness is a vital commodity which makes SWISS unique. I see it as my new duty to ensure that we continue to cultivate this invaluable company asset. And I am particularly looking forward to becoming part of the SWISS team.”
Why SWISS’ new CEO pick is an interesting one
I wasn’t familiar with Fehlinger before this announcement, though there are several things I find noteworthy here.
For one, at only 43 years old, Fehlinger will be one of the younger CEOs at a major airline. He has almost two decades experience at the airline group, so he certainly is familiar with the inner workings of the Lufthansa Group, even though he’s new to subsidiary SWISS.
Next, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a coincidence, but it’s interesting how so many senior executives at Lufthansa Group started their careers as pilots.
I mean, traditional wisdom isn’t that you should become a pilot if you want to become CEO of an airline, but that’s the case at Lufthansa Group. Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr started his career as a pilot, as did Lufthansa CEO Jens Ritter. Now the same is true of the SWISS CEO.
Lastly, while Fehlinger has quite the breadth of experience at Lufthansa Group, he’s not necessarily the person you’d expect to lead SWISS. SWISS is a well established, full service carrier. Meanwhile Fehlinger’s recent experience has been with setting up and running Lufthansa’s new carriers that are essentially intended to reduce labor costs.
Of course starting up a new subsidiary is a big task, but it’s interesting to go from that to running one of Lufthansa Group’s full service carriers. Hopefully he’s not tasked with finding similar cost saving labor “opportunities” at SWISS.
As I said above, I don’t know much about Fehlinger beyond what has been written, and I look forward to seeing how he does, and wish him all the best. In fairness, it seems decisions at Lufthansa Group are made pretty centrally by Spohr, so we’ll see how much power he really has anyway.
Bottom line
43-year-old German Jens Fehlinger will soon take over as CEO of SWISS. He has been at Lufthansa Group for nearly two decades, most recently leading Lufthansa CityLine and Lufthansa City Airlines, both of which are carriers simply intended to reduce labor costs. I wish him all the best in his new role, and am curious what kind of changes we see under his leadership.
What do you make of SWISS’ new CEO?
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