Effective May 1st 2019, Frank Naeve will become Vice President of Sales, The Americas, Lufthansa Group. Based at the company’s U.S. headquarters in East Meadow, New York, he will be responsible for the Group’s passenger airline organization in North and South America, spearheading sales in what is the Lufthansa Group’s most important international region outside the European home markets.
In this new position, Naeve will be instrumental in managing the commercial cooperation that the Lufthansa Group passenger airlines have with United Airlines and Air Canada under the transatlantic Joint Venture agreement, the world’s leading airline collaboration of its type. In the Americas region, the Lufthansa Group Passenger Airlines currently operate a robust network of over 670 weekly frequencies to 25 destinations in the U.S. and Canada and 72 weekly frequencies to 11 destinations in nine Central & South American countries.
“With Frank Naeve, we have an extremely experienced and accomplished manager with a breadth of international experience,” said Heike Birlenbach, Lufthansa Group Senior Vice President of Sales, Lufthansa Group Airlines and Chief Commercial Officer Hub Frankfurt. “I have full confidence that the Lufthansa Group Americas region will continue to flourish under his leadership.”
“Lufthansa’s global network is one of the brand’s most important differentiators. I look forward to bridging my work to the Americas region with my past experiences,” said Frank Naeve.
He succeeds Tamur Goudarzi – Pour, who was appointed Chief Commercial Officer of Swiss International Air Lines, a Lufthansa Group subsidiary, as well as heading revenue management for the entire passenger airline group.
Naeve has had a varied career mostly in Lufthansa Cargo (LCAG), one of the logistics arms of the Lufthansa Group and an industry leader. In total, he has spent 30 years working for the Lufthansa Group in Germany, China and Singapore.
Most recently, Frank Naeve held the position of Vice President of Asia Pacific for Lufthansa Cargo, based in Singapore, encompassing sales and operations for Lufthansa Cargo’s activities throughout this important region.
This was not his first assignment in Lufthansa Cargo’s Asia-Pacific sales area. Following completion of Lufthansa’s International Airline Professional Program, a training initiative designed to prepare young executives for future managerial responsibilities, he was appointed Lufthansa Cargo’s Regional Marketing Manager for Southeast Asia and Australia based in Singapore.
In 2001, he moved to Shanghai as General Manager Sales for Greater China. Four years later, he returned to Frankfurt as Vice President Margin Management and in 2011, became General Manager of Jade Cargo International, a Chinese joint venture of Lufthansa Cargo. Following his work with this important collaboration, Mr. Naeve became Vice President, Digitization for Lufthansa Group.
Frank Naeve is both Australian and French and is married with two children.
