The Board of Directors of Malév appointed Martin Gauss Chief Executive Officer of the airline with effect from 20 April. The German professional has nearly 20 years of experience in the airline industry, working on the European Union aviation market.
Martin GaussMartin Gauss is already familiar with Malév since he worked as a consultant at the airline for several months. Martin Gauss thanked the owners for their trust and Géza Fehérváry for his work over the last few months. Géza Fehérváry returns to his former position as Chief Operational Officer of the carrier. Speaking after his appointment Chief Executive Officer Martin Gauss said, “We will have to decide on a new course to navigate Malév through the current market crisis and make the airline fit to face the future. I have on several occasions successfully piloted both aircraft and airlines out of similar situations and I am looking at a significant conversion and turnaround of Malév. I am passionately dedicated to bringing back the lifeblood to this traditional national airline which we will turn into a proud ambassador of Hungary.”
Martin Gauss started his aviation career as a pilot on B737s with British Airways subsidiary Deutsche BA in 1992; by 1995 he was working in the management of the airline. He was manager of the Flight Operations Support Department before he became chief for the Ground Operation Department. In 2002 he was appointed Director Flight Operations, in which capacity he was responsible for all flight crews and the whole Operations Department. In 2003 British Airways sold Deutsche BA to the Intro Group of Hans Rudolf Woehrl. The next year Martin Gauss became joint Managing Director of Deutsche BA (dba) with responsibility for the relaunch of the airline, in which he also took a 10% stake. Under the leadership of Martin Gauss the company became profitable. In 2006 dba was sold to AirBerlin and the German expert maintained his position as Managing Director for one year to integrate dba into AirBerlin. Following the integration Martin Gauss left the company after 15 years. In its last year dba operated about 60,000 flights and carried around 4.5 million passengers. The dba fleet had a total of 28 aircraft.
In October 2007 Martin Gauss joined the Cirrus Group and became CEO of Cirrus Airlines and Managing Director of Cirrus Group. In this function he managed the move of the headquarters from Saarbrücken to Munich to bring together the two airlines of the Group, Augsburg Airways and Cirrus Airlines. He finished the project in June 2008, after he worked for his own company as a consultant for the airline industry.
Martin Gauss still flies a Boeing 737 as a Captain and has recorded more than 8000 flying hours on Boeing 737s. Martin Gauss is 40 years old and has 3 children.
