Austrian Airlines: Gerhard Pitsch appointed as new Chief Pilot

Gerhard Pitsch (48) has been appointed as the new Chief Pilot at Austrian Airlines. He will succeed Rolf Brand as of 1 January 2014, who is to return to SWISS at the end of this year. As the “Postholder Flight Operations”, Pitsch will thereby assume responsibility for the management of the flight operations of Tyrolean Airways, in which the overall flight operations of Austrian Airlines are bundled.

Gerhard Pitsch has been flying for Austrian Airlines since 1987. After training as a commercial airline pilot in Graz, he began his career as a Co-pilot on the MD80. Capt. Pitsch, who was born in Vienna, temporarily switched to the Pilot Corps of Austrian Air Services in 1991, the regional subsidiary of Austrian Airlines at the time, as the Captain of a Fokker 50. From 1994 onwards, he flew as a Co-pilot on the MD11 for Swissair, a period which gave him the opportunity to see the world beyond Austrian aviation. In 1996, Gerhard Pitsch became a Flight Instructor on the Fokker 70 in the Austrian Corps. The next step came in 2003, when he became a Chief Flight Instructor on the A320. In 2009, the father of three was appointed as Fleet Chief of the Boeing 737 fleet. He has been Fleet Chief of the company’s medium-haul fleet since 2010.

Klaus Froese, Managing Director of Tyrolean Airway, said the following about the new appointment:“Thanks to the course his career has taken, ranging from turboprop aircraft to the MD11 on the one hand and from Chief Flight Instructor to Fleet Chief on the other, Capt. Pitsch has extensive knowledge and experience of both the specialist and management sides of the aviation industry. As a man who has worked in many different fields and on many projects inside and outside the Austrian Airlines Group, he has a healthy vision for the common future of our company.”