Dieter Vranckx named next head of SWISS

Dieter Vranckx has held various management positions within the airline industry since 1998 SWISS

Dieter Vranckx will take over from Thomas Klühr as CEO of Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) on January 1.

Vranckx, 47, can look back on some 20 years with the Lufthansa Group, including more than 13 years at SWISS and Swissair, SWISS said in a statementExternal link on Wednesday.

The Swiss-Belgian dual national is currently CEO of Lufthansa Group member Brussels Airlines, a position he took up at the beginning of this year, having joined the company as CFO and Deputy CEO in May 2018. 

Vranckx holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Solvay Business School (Université Libre de Bruxelles). He also completed an advanced management programme at the London Business School in 2007 and a further such programme at the IMD Business School in Lausanne in 2016.

He takes over an airline that has been hit hard, like all airlines, by the Covid pandemic. SWISS reported an operating loss of CHF266.4 million ($293 million) for the first half of the yearExternal link. At the same time, the number of passengers fell by 64% to 3.2 million.

Thomas Klühr announced in September that he would stand down at the end of the year to take up a role on a new body that will monitor the government’s bailout of the industry.