He started his journalism career in 1992 as a freelance writer for Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest daily national newspaper and soon specialised in air transport. Jens joined Aviation Week and Aviation Daily in 2000 as one of the European correspondents. Later his role was expanded to cover international air transport. In 2013 he was named Managing Editor Commercial.
Jens frequently appears on radio and TV to comment on industry matters. In 2003, he received the Hugo Junkers Award of the German aviation press for his coverage of Fairchild Dornier’s bankruptcy. He was named the country’s top travel and air transport writer by the Travel Industry Club three times. Jens graduated from the Munich School of Journalism.
Czech Airlines CEO Radomir Lasak resigned yesterday. The state-owned airline did not give a reason for his departure. Lasak is replaced by Miroslav Dvorak, the CEO of Prague Airport. Miroslav Zameznik has been appointed as chairman of the supervisory board. The Czech government wants to privatize the airline, but only a single bidder is remaining in the process after the pull-out of Air France-KLM. The Unimex/Travel Service consortium offered to pay $58 million for the airline.
Low-fare airlines Germanwings and BMIbaby will display each other’s flights on their respective Web sites. Germanwings will start offering services to Manchester from its Cologne/Bonn base next Sunday from where BMIbaby has several flights. Germanwings hopes to promote its Cologne/Bonn service to BMIbaby passengers in return. Both airlines are part of the Lufthansa group, although Lufthansa has privately indicated it plans to sell the British unit.
Lufthansa is targeting a 40% cut to unit costs in its European non-hub operations in order to bring the segment above the breakeven line. Company sources tell The DAILY the carrier is working on sweeping changes to the way it operates its European mainline and regional network. Those executives rule out one option that has been discussed previously: Lufthansa will not transfer the segment to its low-cost affiliate Germanwings. The airlines officially had no comment.
