airBaltic Supervisory Board Chooses Martin Gauss as New CEO
Riga. 21.10.2011.
Today the Supervisory Board of Latvian national airline airBaltic has chosen
Martin Gauss as the new Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Board as of November 1.
Martin Gauss, Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic: “I am very much looking forward to being part of the airBaltic team. The airline has a very strong brand and is an energetic and innovative company. It will be my task to set up clear structures which are missing at present. I will introduce corporate governance in order to reach a financially positive airline operation. ”
Martin Gauss is a professional with nearly 20 years of experience in the airline industry, and in the European Union aviation market. Between April 2009 and May 2011, Martin Gauss was the CEO of the Hungarian carrier Malev, an airline with 22 aircraft and more than three million passengers in 2010. There he simplified the fleet from 5 different aircraft types to two and established new structures.
Martin Gauss started his aviation career as a pilot on B737s with British Airways subsidiary Deutsche BA in 1992; by 1995 he was working in the management of the airline. He was manager of the Flight Operations Support Department before he became chief for the Ground Operation Department. In 2002 he was appointed Director Flight Operations, in which capacity he was responsible for all flight crews and the whole Operations Department. In 2003 British Airways sold Deutsche BA to the Intro Group of Hans Rudolf Woehrl. The next year Martin Gauss became joint Managing Director of Deutsche BA (dba) with responsibility for the relaunch of the airline, in which he also took a 10% stake. Under the leadership of Martin Gauss the company became profitable. In 2006 dba was sold to AirBerlin and Martin Gauss maintained his position as Managing Director for one year to integrate dba into AirBerlin. Following the integration Martin Gauss left the company after 15 years. In its last year dba operated approximately 60,000 flights and carried around 4.5 million passengers. The dba fleet had a total of 28 aircraft. In October 2007 Martin Gauss joined the Cirrus Group and became CEO of Cirrus Airlines and Managing Director of the Cirrus Group. In this function he managed the centralization of the headquarters to Munich. He completed this project in June 2008, after which he established his own company as consultants to the airline industry.
Martin Gauss flies a Boeing 737 as a Captain and has recorded more than 8000 flying hours on Boeing 737s. He is 43 years old and has 3 children.
The executive board of airBaltic consists of three members. Two of the executive board members – Chief Operations Officer Laila Odiņa and Chief Finance Officer Vitolds Jakovļevs were elected by the Supervisory Board already early October, following the decision to inject EUR 153 million in new capital of airBaltic financed by its two main shareholders, the Latvian government and Baltic Aviation Systems (BAS).
airBaltic serves over 60 destinations with direct flights from its home base in Riga, Latvia. From every one of these, airBaltic offers convenient connections via North Hub Riga to its network spanning Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, CIS and the Middle East.
da slipper jeg å tenke mer på om det blir tur eller ikke til Riga om en mnd. En "bekymring" mindre i hverdagen
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