AirTran announces leadership appointments

AirTran Airways has announced leadership promotions and reporting changes in the areas of operations and customer service.

Klaus Goersch becomes executive vice president, operations and customer service, in which role he will continue to lead the airline's flight operations, maintenance and engineering, and system operations control, and will assume new responsibilities for oversight of airport customer service, inflight service, reservations and customer relations. In this new role, Goersch will report to Bob Fornaro, chairman, president and CEO. Goersch joined AirTran Airways in 1996 as director of safety and has held a series of progressively more responsible flying and leadership positions over the past 14 years.

The new senior vice-president customer service is to be Jack Smith, who will continue to lead the airport customer service and inflight service group as well as increasing his role with the company by assuming new responsibilities for the oversight of reservations sales and customer relations – adding more than 800 crew members in three Georgia call centres to his group. With these changes, Smith has responsibility for all aspects of customer service from making a reservation to retrieving a bag. Smith joined AirTran Airways eight years ago and will report to Goersch.

Rocky Wiggins, who serves as senior vice-president, information services and chief information officer, assumes new responsibilities for process improvement in order to improve product and services to all customers. Wiggins will continue to report to Bob Fornaro.

Stephen Kolski switches form being executive vice-president for operations and corporate affairs to serve as executive vice-president, corporate affairs. Reporting to Fornaro, Kolski will focus on various areas including regulatory compliance, labour negotiations and Atlanta airport lease negotiations.

"These changes enhance the company's overall focus and coordination to better serve our customers," remarked Bob Fornaro. "We have an exceptional leadership team at AirTran Airways, and we are proud of the contributions Klaus, Jack, Rocky and Steve have made and will continue to make at the airline. Today's announcement aligns the interests of the airline with our customers as we strive to build an even better airline going forward."

All the changes are effective immediately.