Airbus appoints New Heads for A380 and A320 programmes 

Mario Heinen (50) has been appointed Senior Vice President and Head of the A380 Programme. Mr Heinen previously lead the Single Aisle Programme, and before that headed the Airbus Delivery Centres in Toulouse and Hamburg. He joined Airbus in 1999 coming from Lufthansa Technik, where he served as General Manager Aircraft Maintenance.

There is also a new Head of the Single Aisle Programme - Alain Flourens (49), who is currently Executive Vice President and Head of Airbus’ Centres of Excellence (COEs). The Heads of the COEs will, from now on, directly report to the Executive Vice President Operations Karl-Heinz Hartmann (55). This flattens the management structure by removing one reporting level.

Mario Heinen and Alain Flourens will report to Tom Williams (54), who is extending his role as Executive Vice President Programmes to all Airbus aircraft families. He reports directly to Airbus CEO, Christian Streiff.

“In four years as Head of the Airbus Single Aisle Programme, Mario Heinen demonstrated great leadership and outstanding management capabilities in the extremely successful ramp-up of this programme. Under his watch, the A320 family smoothly obtained record series production results. He previously achieved great customer satisfaction when he managed the Airbus Delivery Centres. Mario has strong support from Tom Williams, who has proven to be a courageous and decisive leader,” Mr Streiff said.

“I am grateful for Alain Flourens’ achievements as Head of the COEs. He successfully implemented the first step of rationalising the organisational structure of manufacturing units. He will now lead Airbus’ largest and most successful programme.”

Charles Champion (51) hands over the A380 programme to Mario Heinen as the A380 moves from development and certification to the ramp-up of the series production. He has been appointed special advisor to the CEO Christian Streiff.

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