The Latvian national airline airBaltic is reorganising its corporate structure – in the future, the Board Members will only have executive functions.The aim of the reorganisation is to ensure a more efficient management.
Until now, the persons elected in the Board – the Board Chairman and three Board Members – were simultaneously carrying out duties of the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Commercial Officer. After the reorganisation, they have terminated their work in their elected posts of the Board. From now on, Bertolt Flick will be fulfilling the duties of the President and the CEO; Martin Antonovichs (Mārtiņš Antonovičs) – the duties of the Chief Financial Officer; Laila Odina (Laila Odiņa) – the duties of the Chief Operations Officer; Tero Taskila – the duties of the Chief Commercial Officer.
Under the laws on aviation and the EU requirements, each airline must have an accountable manager – a person of the senior management level with ultimate responsibility for safety in company’s operations. Since 2002, the duties of the accountable manager of airBaltic have been carried out by Bertolt Flick.
The President and CEO of airBaltic Bertolt Flick: “2009 was not an easy year for the aviation industry, and 2010 will also be a difficult one. airBaltic management’s work must be target-oriented and efficient, in order to continue the successful results we achieved over 2009. We must fully focus on the business which, in Latvia, provides thousands of jobs in the aviation sector, as well as tens of thousands of jobs in the tourism sector in general.
airBaltic is planning to expand business and therefore the management structure needs to be simplified.”
A new Board of the company will be nominated by the shareholders’ meeting and elected by the airBaltic Supervisory Board.