London Air Travel » British Airways »
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.