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SWISS appoints Jens Fehlinger as new CEO 

The Swiss International Air Lines logo is shown on the side of a plane.
Keystone/Valentin Flauraud

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) has found a successor to CEO Dieter Vranckx, who will step down at the end of June. Jens Fehlinger will take over as CEO on October 1, 2024, the airline announced on Friday. 

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Until he takes over, Head of Commercial Heike Birlenbach will lead the airline as interim CEO. 

Fehlinger, 43, is currently managing director of Lufthansa City Airlines. The German national began his professional career as a pilot and has held various management positions at the Lufthansa Group. 

According to the press release, he was responsible for the Lufthansa Group’s crisis management office during the Covid pandemic and subsequently headed up the “ReNew” restructuring project. 

+ SWISS CEO admits mistakes were made during pandemic

With Fehlinger, SWISS is gaining a “profound expert in the industry”, Reto Francioni, the company’s chairman of the board, was quoted as saying in the press release. He further emphasised that Fehlinger’s personality enables him to fit in with the board of directors and the “distinctive culture of SWISS”. 

After more than three years, the retiring Lufthansa CEO Dieter Vranckx will move to the executive board of the parent company Lufthansa on July 1, 2024. Vranckx will also remain with SWISS as vice chairman of the board of directors. 

Adapted from German by DeepL/kc/ts

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. 

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch

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