Sweeping management reorganization at Lufthansa

Lufthansa is going through a big reorganization of its business divisions, with a focus on customer departments.

Lufthansa is going through a big reorganization of its business divisions, with a focus on customer departments. According to the airline, ongoing development of the organization will strengthen and sustain Lufthansa’s passenger business divisions, which will in the future benefit from more efficient structures that are tailored to changed customer requirements, tougher competition, and also to the new group structure. The changes will take effect on April 1.

The reallocation of responsibilities and new appointments to the Lufthansa German Airlines Board announced on December 7, 2010 will also become effective on April 1. Captain Kay Kratky will then be responsible for the Frankfurt and Flight Operations division, Thomas Klรผhr for Munich and Direct Services, and Jens Bischof for Sales and Revenue Management. Dr. Roland Busch will remain in charge of the Finance and Human Resources division. Carsten Spohr took up his position as a member of the Lufthansa Executive Board and, simultaneously, CEO Lufthansa German Airlines on January 1.

In the finance and human resources division, the controlling, human resources, procurement, airport relations, information management functions and a finance project will have a direct reporting line to Dr. Roland Busch. Antonio Schulthess, who is joining Lufthansa from Swiss International Air Lines, will be responsible for Human Resources. Management of the other functions remains unchanged.

In the sales and revenue management division, headed by Jens Bischof, greater emphasis will be placed on Lufthansaยนs business and leisure travel sales activities. To that end, a new department responsible for the business travel segment will be set up and headed by Marcus Frank. Christian Tillmans, meanwhile, will be in charge of private customer sales and tourism in the leisure travel business segment. In the future, sales and revenue management will be merged under the management of Lars Redeligx.

From April, a number of appointments will be taken up in area sales management. Uwe Mรผller will be responsible for Germany and the Lufthansa Airline Group markets (Switzerland and Austria), while European markets will remain the remit of Dr. Karsten Benz. Jรผrgen Siebenrock, who is joining Lufthansa from Lufthansa Cargo, will be responsible for managing markets in the Americas, and Steffen Harbarth will be in charge of Asia/Pacific. Joachim Steinbach will remain responsible for Africa and the Middle East.

The reorganization of the Frankfurt und flight operations division will create four functions with a direct reporting line to Captain Kay Kratky. Dr. Alexis von Hoensbroech will be responsible for commercial management. Andreas Dรถpper will remain in charge of station and infrastructure development at Frankfurt. Wolfgang Kohlhagen, who is moving from Condor Flugdienst GmbH to Lufthansa, will assume responsibility for cabin crew at Frankfurt. The operations department at Frankfurt, which will in future incorporate flight operations as well as specific ground processes, will be headed by Captain Werner Knorr.

Following the creation of the new Munich and direct services division headed by Thomas Klรผhr, the strategy of divisionalization will be carried forward and developed. The organizational structure of the operational units at Frankfurt will also be established in full at Munich under Helmut Wรถlfel as Commercial Manager. Captain Kai-Uwe Spannbauer will be in charge of operations at MUC. In the future, Munich cabin crews will be managed by Heike Birlenbach, while Burkhard Feuge will be responsible for station and infrastructure development at Munich. Oliver Wagner will remain in charge of direct services, which will be responsible for all Lufthansa flights that are not routed through the Frankfurt or Munich hubs. Responsibility for Lufthansaยนs activities in Italy will be bundled in a separate department and assigned to Michael Kraus, who will thus be responsible for Lufthansa Italia operations and Lufthansaยนs sales organization in Milan. In addition, he will remain Managing Director of Air Dolomiti.

As part of the restructuring process, new cross-functions will also be created. In future, aside from strategy development, the business development unit will oversee network and corporate development, as well as fleet dimensioning and allocation. This function will be headed by Armin Herzwurm. Product and marketing management will be bundled in another cross-divisional function, which will be managed from April by Dr. Reinhold Huber. The new “Future Berlin” project will be launched to look into ways of expanding Lufthansaยนs market position in Berlin. The manager responsible for this new function will be Josef Bogdanski. Managers in charge of the cross-functions will report direct to the CEO of Lufthansa German Airlines, Carsten Spohr.

Christian Tillmanns’ move from the management of Lufthansa CityLine to Lufthansa will create a vacancy on the board at Lufthansa’s regional subsidiary. Stephan Klar will, therefore, be proposed to the Lufthansa CityLine Supervisory board as a new member of the airline’s board of directors.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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