Chris Jasper/LONDON Herman De Wulf/BRUSSELS
Sabena president and chief executive Christoph Müller has emerged as favourite to succeed Moritz Suter as CEO of SAirLines following the former Crossair chief's resignation.
Müller is seen as one of the few high calibre managers left within the Swissair family, with Suter's departure following the dismissal of former high-flyers Philippe Bruggisser and Paul Reutlinger.
German-born Müller was made head of Sabena by part-owner SAirGroup last year, having joined the Belgian carrier as chief operating officer a year earlier, when he was head-hunted from Lufthansa.
SAir will not comment on the succession to Suter, but senior SAir sources describe reports linking Müller to the post as "valuable speculation", and say a decision should be taken this week.
Suter took over as head of SAirLines, the division encompassing SAir's airline interests, at the end of January. He resigned six weeks later with SAir saying he left "citing his inability to tackle the task with sufficient likelihood of success under the current SAirLines management structure". He continues as chairman of Crossair, at least in the short term.
Though Suter had been keen to sever SAir's costly links with Sabena and its loss-making French holdings, one SAir source says there was no great schism between him and SAirGroup chairman and acting CEO Eric Honegger, adding: "I don't think this will change the strategy."
The source says the real clash related to ill-feeling between Suter and senior SAir figures due to the uneasy Swissair-Crossair relationship. "There was a lot of opposition to Suter from within Swissair because of Crossair," says the source. "He found that because of that he could not run SAirLines in the way he wanted to." In a further twist, the bulk of SAir directors resigned last Friday, taking responsibility for the group's troubles.
Source: Flight International
