The Board of Directors of Air Europa made official the appointment of Jesús Nuño de la Rosa as the company’s new CEO. He will replace Valentín Lago, who has held the position since March 2021.
The appointment was agreed between Air Europa and the Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI), which rescued the company. Final approval will require the authorization of the Solvency Support Fund for Strategic Companies, which authorized the injection of 475 million euros in November 2020.
«The new CEO joins Air Europa at a decisive moment for the future of the company, following the agreement with Iberia, which has formalized a convertible loan of 100 million euros«, highlited Globalia, the tourism group that owns the company.
The new CEO has extensive experience at the helm of companies in the tourism sector. He worked for 31 years at El Corte Inglés; from 1998 he served as General Manager of the Travel division and in 2018 he became the first President of the group who was not part of the company’s founding family.
He is currently a member of several company advisory boards, Chairman of the Social Council of the Complutense University of Madrid, member of the Tourism Roundtable and of the Tourism Sector Advisory Board for KPMG.
Consolidating the recovery
According to Air Europa, Jesús Nuño de la Rosa will be in charge, together with the general management, of «consolidating the expansion phase» that has begun. The airline aims to reach and improve the levels of activity prior to the beginning of the pandemic during the second half of this year. In the same vein, it has already announced that it plans to increase the number of seats by 5% compared to 2019.
In recent months, and like much of the airline industry, it began to recover its operations as a result of the lifting of health restrictions and the growing demand for air travel. The process was reinforced with the incorporation of eleven new aircraft and the resumption of routes. Air Europa will maintain flights to 23 destinations in the Americas and 33 in Spain and Europe during 2022.
