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British Airways has appointed a new Chief Operating Officer.
René de Groot is to join BA as COO from KLM.
René, a former airline pilot, has been with KLM for 32 years and is currently COO. René will leave KLM on 15 July and join BA in October.
BA is restructuring its Operations division. Jason Mahoney, formerly COO, becomes Chief Technical Officer. BA had wanted to bring someone from outside the airline as a new COO.
Other management changes previously announced by Sean Doyle include appointing Calum Laming as Chief Customer Officer and Dirk John as Chief Information and Digital Officer.
This summer has been extremely challenging for BA and other airlines.
Rene will bring a lot of experience of airport hub operations. KLM is a different airline to BA as it has substantially more connecting traffic at its main hub. KLM has also had an extremely challenging summer due to capacity constraints at Amsterdam Schiphol.
BA has taken a number of interim measures to address staff shortages and capacity constraints. These include cancellations and transferring the bulk of flights from Terminal 3 to 5 from Tuesday 12 July.
This is not the first executive change at Europe’s major airlines. easyJet’s COO Peter Bellew announced his departure this week. These may well not be the last. If these airlines do not deliver performance improvements in the coming months their Chairs and investors may demand further management changes.
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So I guess that’s Jason Mahoney being ‘nicely’ sacked ?
Mr Doyle is also responsible for the sh*tshow that is BA lately. Now out of covid and the same excuses. They cancelled a gatwick flight out. No alternative given online. No Links shed any light. Can’t get through on phones or twitter or you have to give your life story each time and go around in circles to go nowhere. Eventually get through, 1 hour later and find an alternative. Hold another 10 minutes and then no not possible, sorry I was wrong. there is a BA 3 days or 14 days post the flight date change limit. That doesn’t make sense. Apparently it’s the policy he just found out. Couldn’t explain or wouldn’t offer a change that would fit. Couldn’t sign post the location of the policy he was now referring and couldn’t email me anything useful as not allowed. I couldn’t find that when i was looking and he couldn’t send the link or document. Still can’t find. Twitter haven’t responded. This is how they treat silver members flying club. What a joke. I just wish we had an alternative in Europe in OneWorld. Still no flight out atm. The staff in India on the call centre don’t appear trained. British airways is british in name only! Will this at least mean the lounges will improve at Heathrow? Something positive please
Jason Mahoney was a complete disaster. The man tried to get a job at EasyJet. It wasnt until individuals pointed out how both him and his Spanish mate, Alex Cruz, had absolutely trashed industrial relations and gutted the company of experience, goodwill and its passion, did the CEO of Easy refuse to give him the job he was bragging to everyone about.