Brussels Airlines appoints Edi Wolfensberger as new MD operations

Feb 27, 2019: Edi Wolfensberger will join the management board of Brussels Airlines in the role of MD operations, effective April 15. Together with CEO Christina Foerster and CFO Dieter Vranckx, he will report to the SN Airholding board of directors.

The 37-year-old Swiss is currently the MD of Lufthansa Aviation Training Switzerland. He will head the operational departments of the Belgian company i.e., flight operations, maintenance & engineering, ground operations. This position was previously held by Thibault Demoulin, who joined Brussels Airlines in 2004 and who will return to his passion by working as a full-time captain for Airbus A330.

"With Edi Wolfensberger, we welcome an aviation expert with managerial experience and international know-how to the team. He will help us to prepare our operations for the future," Etienne Davignon, co-chairman of the board of directors of SN Airholding.

"The vast experience of Edi Wolfensberger in terms of pilot training, maintenance, controlling and sales, and his international background, will be of a real added value for Brussels Airlines and Eurowings. He is not only very pragmatic and open-minded, but he is also a manager who stands behind his teams. I am confident that he is a very good fit for our company," Christina Foerster, CEO of Brussels Airlines.

After his graduation from the University in Aarau, Switzerland as an industrial engineer, Wolfensberger started his career in 2007 as a sales and distribution controller at the food company Hiestand in Switzerland.

He gained his early professional experience in the car industry with his apprenticeship at the AMAG Automobil und Motoren AG Utoquai, Switzerland in 1997 and with ConiTech S.A. in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Since 2001, he holds his private pilot license with different ratings.

During his airline career, he built up extensive expertise in terms of pilot training, maintenance, controlling and sales activities. In 2008, that he joined the airline industry as manager controlling technics at Swiss International Air Lines, where he occupied until 2015 different functions, such as the head of commercial controlling, director of market communication and pricing, and head of channel management.

In June 2015, Edi Wolfensberger integrated the Airline Training Centre Arizona (Phoenix, US) as director finance, HR & administration and successfully managed the turnaround of the company.

"I am personally very grateful to Thibault Demoulin for his exemplary support and engagement. He played a crucial part in bringing our company to higher levels and especially in the last year he was of tremendous assistance in bringing Brussels Airlines and the Lufthansa Group even closer together. Next to that, and supported by his teams and the teams at Eurowings, he has within a record time of five months established a long-haul base out of Dsseldorf, a first in the European airline industry," Christina Foerster, CEO of Brussels Airlines.