ONE EXPERIENCED Irish airline executive who won’t be applying for the Aer Lingus top job is Longford man Donal Rogers, who has been installed as chief executive of VivaAerobus, a low-cost carrier in Mexico.
Rogers had been chief financial officer for three years at VivaAerobus and will take the controls in July.
The Irishman was previously chief financial officer and deputy chief executive at Pegasus Airlines in Turkey, which once numbered Aer Lingus among its backers.
VivaAerobus was launched in 2006 with a view to persuading Mexicans to forsake the bus and make their cross-country journeys by plane at low cost.
It is owned by Iamsa, Mexico’s biggest bus company, and Irelandia Investments, which is controlled by the family of the late Tony Ryan.
Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary made light recently of the effects of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico on the airline industry, but Rogers won’t have been laughing.
Swine flu has knocked the industry for six in Mexico with passenger traffic down 18 per cent in April across 13 airports.
VivaAerobus blamed it for the cancellation of its daily service to Austin, Texas, which was only launched a year ago.
Rogers’s appointment continues the greening of the global airline industry – Willie Walsh runs British Airways while Alan Joyce is in charge at Aussie flag carrier Qantas.
That’s to say nothing of Aer Lingus, which is currently working on finding a new chief.
O’Leary has called for an internal appointment, but Irishman Brian Dunne, a former CFO at Aer Lingus who now holds a senior executive role with Air Canada, continues to be rated the favourite.
