The FINANCIAL — At its meeting held on July 8, the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG made a number of decisions concerning new appointments to central positions in the company’s core business area, Lufthansa German Airlines.
Effective from 1st September 2015, Klaus Froese will succeed Kay Kratky and take on responsibility for Lufthansa’s home hub in Frankfurt and overall responsibility for Operations. Kay Kratky has already been appointed as the Chair of the Executive Board of Austrian Airlines effective from 1st August 2015 and will therefore be moving to Lufthansa’s subsidiary in Vienna.
Effective from 1st November 2015, Thomas Winkelmann, who has been the Spokesman of the Executive Board of Germanwings GmbH since 2006, will also move to Lufthansa German Airlines. Winkelmann will not only manage Lufthansa’s southern hub in Munich, but will also be responsible for Finances and Controlling at Lufthansa German Airlines in the future. Thomas Klühr, who is currently responsible for this task, will take on a new Executive Board position within the Lufthansa Group. Further details on this change will be announced in September. A decision on the composition and structure of the Executive Board of Eurowings/Germanwings will also be made in autumn, according to Lufthansa.
“I am delighted that we have been able to acquire two such successful and experienced airline managers for the important management tasks involved in our two largest hubs in the form of Klaus Froese and Thomas Winkelmann”, explains Karl Ulrich Garnadt, Member of the Executive Board of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Chairman of the Executive Board of Lufthansa German Airlines. “With the new team, we will continue to rapidly advance the reorientation of Lufthansa German Airlines.”
“We are particularly pleased that, once again, we have been able to fill key executive positions with individuals from within our own ranks who have already acquired extensive experience with various business models and in various corporate areas within the Lufthansa Group,” says Carsten Spohr, Chairman of the Executive Board & CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.
Klaus Froese (52) began his aeronautical career in 1987 as a co-pilot with the airline Deutsche Luftverkehrsgesellschaft mbH (DLT), the forerunner of Lufthansa CityLine. He has been flying as a Lufthansa Group pilot since 1989. Froese was a pilot on the Embraer 120 and 190/195, Bombardier CRJ 200/700/900, Fokker 50, Boeing 737 and Boeing 747, as well as the flight training captain of the Airbus A320 fleet. In 1998, Froese, who was born in the German city of Bonn, became Lufthansa’s Head of Quality Management before being appointed as the Group Safety Pilot in 2002. In 2006, he was promoted to the position of Managing Director of Lufthansa CityLine GmbH and in 2013, he moved to Austria to become the Managing Director of Tyrolean Airways. When Tyrolean and Austrian were consolidated in 2015, he took on responsibility for the entire flight operations of Austrian Airlines as the company’s COO.
Thomas Winkelmann (55) started his career at Lufthansa in 1998 and was assigned responsibility for North and South America at the airline’s office in New York in 2000. In 2006, Winkelmann moved to Germanwings GmbH in the German city of Cologne as the Spokesman of the Executive Board, where he was responsible for strategy, communication and all of the company’s commercial areas. Under Winkelmann’s management, Germanwings has established a successful position in the low-cost market over the past two years with a new fare concept and product range, a fresh brand identity and a strongly extended route network. The Lufthansa Group’s “budget airline” was significantly expanded when it took over Lufthansa’s direct “point-to-point” routes whilst simultaneously being successfully led to profitability by Winkelmann and his team.
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