According to a media release, the Swiss Board of Directors has appointed Dieter Vranckx as CEO with effect from January 1, 2021. He succeeds Thomas Klühr, who is leaving his position at the end of the year for personal reasons.
Vranckx has Swiss and Belgian citizenship. He lives in the canton of Zurich, is married and has two children. The 47-year-old worked for the Lufthansa Group for around two decades . He worked for Swiss and Swissair for a total of 13 years. Since the beginning of this year he has been CEO of Brussels Airlines, which is also part of the Lufthansa Group . From 2016 to 2018 he was Vice President in Singapore and was responsible for sales and marketing activities for the Lufthansa Group's airlines in the Asia-Pacific region.
"I am very pleased that Dieter Vranckx is coming back to SWISS and that we have been able to win him over as the new CEO", Reto Francioni, President of the Swiss Board of Directors, is quoted in the announcement. "He knows SWISS and the Lufthansa Group very well from his previous functions and has led successfully even in difficult times." Vranckx will further develop the "successful SWISS business model in line with the drastic market changes".
Swiss International Air Lines AG (stylised as SWISS), commonly referred to as Swiss, is the national airline[6] of Switzerland, operating scheduled services in Europe and to North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Zurich Airport is its hub, Geneva Airport is a focus city. The airline was formed following the bankruptcy in 2002 of Swissair, Switzerland's then flag carrier. The new airline was built around what had been Swissair's regional subsidiary, Crossair. Swiss retains Crossair's IATA code LX (Swissair's code was SR). It assumed Swissair's old ICAO code of SWR (Crossair's was CRX), to maintain international traffic rights. It is a member of Star Alliance and a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group. Its headquarters are at EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburgnear Basel, Switzerland, and an office at Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland.[7] The company's registered office is in Basel.[8]
