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.
In this post:
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?
The guy was responsible for low cost carriers……
As a HC member for several years this decision is just more of the same. He is a puppet for Carsten. Non-Germans are not trustworthy because the tasks required are sadly unethical.
Swiss will be cut to the bone and beyond. Employees and passengers will be screwed. Legislation will be ignored. Lufthansa itself has over 25000 legal cases in German courts….
Let the lies begin!!...
The guy was responsible for low cost carriers……
As a HC member for several years this decision is just more of the same. He is a puppet for Carsten. Non-Germans are not trustworthy because the tasks required are sadly unethical.
Swiss will be cut to the bone and beyond. Employees and passengers will be screwed. Legislation will be ignored. Lufthansa itself has over 25000 legal cases in German courts….
Let the lies begin!! Small „improvements“ at first: employee side benefits will be „adjusted“, pax experience „optimised“. Eg FRA FCL/FCT lounge opening hours reduced, staff reduced, drinks selection cheapened or „temporarily unavailable“ (regular occurrence on LH FC flights: sorry xx wasn’t loaded!), restaurant & sleeping room linen: cotton out, polyester in or totally replaced with plastic, etc.
LHG is on a downward spiral. But manager compensation will increase !! Schade!
What is happening here appears similar to the organisation I used to work for. People in their early thirties were picked as future leaders. They never spent more than 3 years in the same job and were repeatedly promoted in a non-transparent process. The impact on the organisation was like families who married their cousins.
For me Swiss is no more a Swiss airlines, cost cutting and quality is down for so many years that we are reaching the bottom of what can be done.
This guy has zero experience of the Swiss market, hopefully for Lufthansa there still a lot of Swiss people who will pay to fly Swiss occasionally at high price, but the frequent flyer as I am, no thanks.
My business go to a middle...
For me Swiss is no more a Swiss airlines, cost cutting and quality is down for so many years that we are reaching the bottom of what can be done.
This guy has zero experience of the Swiss market, hopefully for Lufthansa there still a lot of Swiss people who will pay to fly Swiss occasionally at high price, but the frequent flyer as I am, no thanks.
My business go to a middle east airlines, I see much more value and the experience is totally different.
I remember a time when Swissair was a great airlines, then Swiss was fine but it was no more at the same level, the actual Swiss International airlines is more like kind of Aldi discounter.
We are talking about a rich country called Switzerland.
I don't disagree on the cost-cutting, for instance the charge to assign seats is ridiculous, but it has to be said that GVA is more under pressure than ZRH due to Easyjet being very strong at your airport.
First day on the job.
Tell everyone customer EU261 doesn't apply anymore because the entire fleet is 737 and have rudder issues.
Well, that was a slightly misleading title on the main page...it made it seem like he was promoted straight from being a pilot to CEO with zero management positions in-between.
I thought View From the Wing and Live and Let Fly were the places for clickbait titles...
There are a number of airlines that have a strong promote-from-within mindset and that has worked well but not looking outside the company and the airline industry can lead to an airline becoming inwardly focused.
Pilots are often well-educated beyond being a pilot and this guy sounds like he has proven himself in that regard.
The biggest concern is that he could be just a puppet for LH and their strategies. If the Swiss are...
There are a number of airlines that have a strong promote-from-within mindset and that has worked well but not looking outside the company and the airline industry can lead to an airline becoming inwardly focused.
Pilots are often well-educated beyond being a pilot and this guy sounds like he has proven himself in that regard.
The biggest concern is that he could be just a puppet for LH and their strategies. If the Swiss are happy with having an airline that is just a subsidiary that is run by a foreigner but that strikes me as being counter to the mindset of the way the Swiss see themselves. In international business, some of those unique cultural characteristics get lost and he could do quite well and provide some uniquely Swiss attributes to his job.
Promotion-from-outside mindset is almost non-existent in continental European business culture - for good and bad. The positive side: at least they don't have an accountant CEO running an airplane business featured with some mid-flight fresh air or the innovative nose down a*s up software (yet).
They should have promoted someone from Delta.
If you mean Swiss people when you say Swiss, they have no say in it. It's Lufthansa's airline, of course it's Lufthansa's puppet. Of course some companies give their subsidiaries more autonomy than others but ultimately it's always the shareholder's strategy that matters.
I for one don't understand why LH even bothers with three brands rather than merging LH/OS/LX into simply Lufthansa. Brussels and Eurowings are clearly distinct, but OS and LX are merely brands.
you echo precisely what I see as the concern.
Swiss is a German airline run by Germans.
Traditionally promote from within to CEO are the CFOs/Accountants, not from the Operational/Engineering side. See Ed Bastion (success) or reference Boeing (ummm)….
In other words, context please, especially from someone in your field of analysis.
I know nothing about the LH Group structure, but generally agree with that paragraph…though does anyone think Swiss still has its own culture?
The Swiss certainly think they have their own culture, and, in any cultural context, there's an immediate recognition of who is Swiss and who is German, French, or Italian, in spite of sharing a language. With Romandes and Ticinesi the linguistic differences tend to be more subtle, but many Swiss Germans, even when they try to speak High German, betray their origins immediately.
But it's a highly regional culture. I can't say whether I...
The Swiss certainly think they have their own culture, and, in any cultural context, there's an immediate recognition of who is Swiss and who is German, French, or Italian, in spite of sharing a language. With Romandes and Ticinesi the linguistic differences tend to be more subtle, but many Swiss Germans, even when they try to speak High German, betray their origins immediately.
But it's a highly regional culture. I can't say whether I prefer the Swiss German or the German approach to hierarchy and authority, but for many Swiss, being "Lufthansa South" is a sore point.
thank you. precisely my point
The holding company (Lufthansa Group -LHG) wants to split Europe right down the middle which goes from Brussels, Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, and now ITA. Also thrown in the brew are regional & LCC carriers plus MRO & tech services. You also want to get the back office functions (finance, scheduling, legal, purchasing, marketing, etc) under one umbrella for economy of scale.
However, LHG needs to give each subsidiary some type of leeway and local...
The holding company (Lufthansa Group -LHG) wants to split Europe right down the middle which goes from Brussels, Lufthansa, Austrian, Swiss, and now ITA. Also thrown in the brew are regional & LCC carriers plus MRO & tech services. You also want to get the back office functions (finance, scheduling, legal, purchasing, marketing, etc) under one umbrella for economy of scale.
However, LHG needs to give each subsidiary some type of leeway and local flavor. If not, it all becomes monochromatic and no one is happy, especially the PAX!!
The age is pretty much irrelevant, what I am worried is that he is a LH pilot. In the last 20 years I do not remember reading that customer orientation would be their strong point...
The article mentions top managers as former pilots... well, here we are then.
None of the statements about appointment mentions the word "customer" or "passenger" once.
It's very normal to work your way from the low positions to the higher management in European companies, I don't think this is anything special about Lufthansa Group.
Ultimately arent all decisions made by lufthansa anyway?
So its not like he can suddenly start making customer-friendly decisions, that would go against what seems to be lufthansas usual direction.
my understanding is that LX has to adhere to corporate rules by LH but it is by all means an independant business unit, more so from the fact it is by far the cash cow of the entire LH group. This and certainly cultural issues, are what makes LX much better than LH on so many levels. Btw. many Swiss complain that LX staff is German, but I can tell you that often Germans living in Switzerland become more Swiss than the Swiss themselves.
Depends on which decisions. Strategy, product, network, pricing is done together for the entire LHG of course. But individual business units still run day to day operations, such as employee management, maintenance, dispatch, etc. Anything relevant for customers is decided in Frankfurt, by design, the main three LHG business units are de facto a one large airline.
Isn't that Cologne instead of Frankfurt?