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Thomas Winkelmann

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Thomas Winkelmann
Born1959
Hagen, West Germany
NationalityGerman
EducationFree University of Berlin; University of Münster; Advanced Management Program, Harvard Business School (2004)
OccupationAirline and logistics executive
CompanyZeitfracht
TitleExecutive Chair, Zeitfracht Group; director, JetBlue
Children2

Thomas Winkelmann (born 1959) is a German airline and logistics executive who was the last chief executive officer of Air Berlin, Germany's second-largest airline, which entered insolvency in August 2017 and stopped flying under its own code at the end of October 2017.[1][2] Before Air Berlin he spent almost two decades with the Lufthansa group. He ran its business in the Americas from Miami and New York, was spokesman of the management board (chief executive) of the low-cost subsidiary Germanwings from 2006 to 2015, and then headed Lufthansa's Munich hub.[3]

Winkelmann was the public face of Germanwings after the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the French Alps on March 24, 2015, in which all 150 people on board died.[4][5] At Air Berlin he was brought in to finish a restructuring that had already shrunk the airline to a long-haul and city network. When the airline's main shareholder Etihad withdrew financial support in August 2017, he oversaw the insolvency filing in self-administration and the sale of the company's parts to Lufthansa, easyJet and the Berlin logistics group Zeitfracht.[6]

His Air Berlin contract became a subject of public controversy during the insolvency. A bank guarantee of up to €4.5 million protected his pay through January 2021. Politicians from both the SPD and the CDU, the head of the German Trade Union Confederation, and the airline's own staff all criticised it.[7]

After Air Berlin, Winkelmann moved to Zeitfracht, which had bought Air Berlin's cargo subsidiary. He chaired the advisory board of its aviation holding company from 2018, became chair of the group's new supervisory board in 2020, and was listed as Executive Chair of the Zeitfracht Group as of April 2026.[8][9][10] He has been a director of the American airline JetBlue since 2013. He joined its board as a Lufthansa nominee, and as of October 2026 he chairs its Airline Safety Committee.[11][10]

Early life and education

Winkelmann was born in 1959 in Hagen, in the Ruhr area of North Rhine-Westphalia.[3] He studied linguistics and ancient history at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Münster. After passing the Staatsexamen, he completed postgraduate studies in business administration at the Free University of Berlin.[3][12] In 2004, while working for Lufthansa in the United States, he completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School in Boston.[3]

Profiles noted that Winkelmann had an unusual background for an airline chief. A 2007 Handelsblatt portrait remarked that the trained linguist and historian had not begun his career in aviation, as was typical in the industry, but in travel retail and department stores.[13]

Career

Deutsches Reisebüro and Kaufhof

Before joining Lufthansa, Winkelmann held management positions at Deutsches Reisebüro GmbH, the travel agency group, and at the department store company Kaufhof. JetBlue's proxy filings state that he worked for these companies both in Germany and in the United States.[3][11]

Lufthansa in the Americas, 1998 to 2006

Winkelmann joined the Lufthansa group in 1998. He held a series of senior management positions in the United States, starting as head of area management for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Miami.[3][11] In September 2000 he became Lufthansa's Vice President The Americas, based in New York. In that post he was responsible for the airline's entire organisation in North and South America, including all operational functions, sales, marketing and the airport stations.[3][11]

The 2007 Handelsblatt profile said the eight years in New York and Miami had left their mark on him. In the US he had watched competitors such as JetBlue, which had built its brand on small touches and pushed direct internet sales early. In an interview he paused to find the German term for "aircraft utilisation", and he greeted staff at the Cologne headquarters with "Hi Guys".[14]

Germanwings, 2006 to 2015

With effect from September 1, 2006, Winkelmann became spokesman of the management board (Sprecher der Geschäftsführung) of Germanwings, the Cologne-based low-cost airline. At the same time he joined the executive board of its parent, Eurowings.[12][15] He was responsible for marketing, online sales, distribution, network planning and corporate communications.[12] According to JetBlue's filings, he sat on the executive board of Eurowings Luftverkehrs AG from 2006 to 2008.[11]

His brief, as Handelsblatt described it in 2007, was to hold off Ryanair, easyJet and Air Berlin, then the second-largest German airline, and to act as what Winkelmann called "a think tank within the group" for Lufthansa. In the previous financial year Germanwings' revenue had risen 39 percent to €560 million. The airline was aiming for more than €600 million in 2007 and for passenger numbers to grow from 7.1 million to more than eight million. Its Airbus fleet was to grow from 27 to 35 aircraft by 2009, and it had just opened Dortmund as its fifth base.[13] The same report said Germanwings was profitable but with a margin of only about one percent. Its low fares also competed with Lufthansa's own €99 offers on routes such as Cologne/Bonn to Munich. The paper wrote that Germanwings served as a development laboratory for sales and marketing approaches that Lufthansa later adopted, including tools first tested on the Germanwings website.[13]

Winkelmann's tenure was later summarised in his biography for the Hamburg Aviation Conference. In the two years before 2015, it said, Germanwings had established itself in the low-cost market with a new fare concept and product range, a new brand identity and a much larger route network. The airline had been significantly expanded when it took over Lufthansa's direct point-to-point routes, and it had been brought to profitability.[15] JetBlue's filings list him as a former director of two other Lufthansa group carriers, Lufthansa CityLine and Air Dolomiti.[16]

Flight 9525

On March 24, 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, crashed in the French Alps. That day Winkelmann told a press conference in Cologne that 144 passengers and six crew had been on board. He said that 67 of the passengers were German, two were babies, and 16 students and two teachers from Haltern am See were among the victims. He declined to give other nationalities until families had been contacted.[4] He told reporters that the aircraft had reached its cruising altitude at 10:45 local time and had then descended for eight minutes, crashing at 10:53. He also said it had been through routine checks at Düsseldorf the day before and that its captain had more than 6,000 flight hours.[4]

Two days later, after investigators said they believed the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had brought the aircraft down deliberately, Winkelmann and Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr held a joint press conference. Both said repeatedly that there had been no warning signs about Lubitz. Winkelmann confirmed that Lubitz's training had included an extended break some six years earlier, but said confidentiality prevented the company from discussing the reasons. "This is by far the most terrible event in the company's history," he said. "We are really, deeply shocked, and I would not have been able to imagine that the situation would have got even worse."[17]

On April 1, 2015, Winkelmann and Spohr flew by helicopter to Seyne-les-Alpes near the crash site. They laid a wreath at a memorial for the victims in the village of Le Vernet and later attended a service in Haltern am See. The visit came at a time of intense scrutiny of Lufthansa, which had disclosed that Lubitz had told the airline in 2009, after interrupting his flight training, that he had suffered from severe depression.[5][18]

Lufthansa Munich hub, 2015 to 2017

In 2015 Lufthansa decided to fold its point-to-point low-cost business into the Eurowings brand. Lufthansa announced that from November 1, 2015, Winkelmann would be chief executive of its Munich hub, succeeding Thomas Klühr, who left to run Swiss International Air Lines.[3] In the new group structure he was responsible for the hub's commercial management, station management, ground infrastructure and processes, hub development, and the operational planning and control of all flights to and from Munich.[3] His Hamburg Aviation Conference biography adds that he also took on finance and controlling for Lufthansa German Airlines.[15] JetBlue's filings date the start of the role to January 1, 2016, and state that he was also a member of the Lufthansa Group Executive Committee.[19]

Air Berlin, 2017 to 2018

Appointment

On December 18, 2016, the board of Air Berlin PLC announced that Winkelmann, then 57, would become chief executive of the Air Berlin group from February 1, 2017, with full responsibility for all of its activities. He succeeded Stefan Pichler.[20] Pichler had negotiated a wet-lease agreement placing 38 Air Berlin aircraft with the Lufthansa group, and the sale of the short and medium-haul leisure business to the Etihad Aviation Group for a planned joint venture with TUI. The "new Air Berlin" was to concentrate on a long-haul network of 75 aircraft from Berlin and Düsseldorf.[20] Austrian Wings reported that, according to insiders, Pichler was not leaving entirely voluntarily.[1] Chairman Hans-Joachim Körber said Winkelmann was regarded as one of the most experienced figures in the international airline industry. Winkelmann said he was impressed by the staff's recognition "that changes are necessary".[1]

On his first day, February 1, 2017, Winkelmann said he had taken the job to complete the repositioning of the company, with about 7,500 employees behind him.[21]

Restructuring

The Lufthansa wet lease began on February 10, 2017, when the first three Air Berlin aircraft flew in Eurowings colours from Hamburg. Winkelmann called it a milestone that secured jobs.[22] In March 2017 the management board decided to close the Swiss subsidiary Belair at the end of the summer 2017 schedule. Its roughly 280 employees were given a 12-month employment guarantee.[23]

Presenting the 2016 results on April 28, 2017, Winkelmann blamed the "highly unsatisfactory" figures on the old Air Berlin's blurred market position, its heavily seasonal network and its high operating costs. He said he had set out to turn the loss-making hybrid carrier into "a focused, cost-efficient network airline", which also meant exploring options beyond the existing strategy.[24] Because of infrastructure limits in Berlin, he said, further long-haul growth would focus first on Düsseldorf. By then the network had been cut from 387 routes to fewer than 100, and 35 of the 38 wet-lease aircraft had been transferred to Lufthansa.[24]

In June 2017 Air Berlin confirmed it had made a preliminary enquiry about a state loan guarantee. Winkelmann then announced that it would not apply. He said renegotiated aircraft leases and lower distribution costs had already secured savings for 2018 "in the double-digit millions", so a guarantee was "simply no longer necessary".[25] In August 2017 Air Berlin announced a cooperation with JetBlue, on whose board Winkelmann sat. It offered connections to 31 US destinations from New York JFK, Boston and Orlando from September 12, 2017.[26]

Insolvency

After Etihad said it no longer intended to support the airline financially, the company applied on August 15, 2017, to the Berlin-Charlottenburg district court to open insolvency proceedings in self-administration (Eigenverwaltung). The German government provided a bridging loan so that flights could continue. "We are working tirelessly to achieve the best for the company, our customers and our employees in this situation," Winkelmann said.[6] The loan, of €150 million from the state development bank KfW and secured by a federal guarantee, kept the airline flying while buyers were sought.[2] Winkelmann later said that without it, the fleet would have had to be grounded on the weekend of August 12 and 13, 2017, with the immediate loss of every job.[27] The insolvency was run by Winkelmann as chief executive, together with general representative Frank Kebekus and the court-appointed custodian Lucas Flöther. The creditors' committees confirmed this arrangement on August 23, 2017.[28]

On September 12, 2017, in the middle of the bidding period, about 200 of the airline's roughly 1,500 pilots called in sick at short notice. About 100 of the 750 flights planned that day were cancelled. Winkelmann called the action "playing with fire", said it had cost the company "several million euros", and warned that stable operations were a precondition for the investor negotiations.[29] That evening he wrote that the company had received 149 sick notes from pilots for the following day, when a further 32 flights were cancelled.[30]

On September 25, 2017, the company said it would negotiate exclusively with Lufthansa and easyJet until October 12. Winkelmann said the bidders offered good job prospects to about 80 percent of staff, but "we can only really breathe again when the EU Commission has finally approved the transactions."[27] Long-haul flying ended on October 15, 2017, as lessors withdrew the airline's Airbus A330 aircraft.[2]

Sale of the business

On October 12, 2017, Air Berlin agreed to sell its subsidiaries Luftfahrtgesellschaft Walter (LGW) and Niki, plus 20 further aircraft, to the Lufthansa group. The company said the deal preserved all jobs at Niki and LGW. It was subject to approval by the creditors' committee, the custodian and the European Commission.[2] Reuters reported a purchase price of about €210 million. Lufthansa chief Spohr said the airline would invest about €1.5 billion in total as a result, and Ryanair, which had called the talks a "stitch-up", said it would refer the matter to EU competition authorities.[31] "This contract provides new opportunities for jobs for a large part of our workforce," Winkelmann said.[31]

On October 24, 2017, Zeitfracht agreed to buy the Düsseldorf air freight broker Leisure Cargo and its roughly 60 employees. Winkelmann called it "a small but important step" in the proceedings.[32] A consortium of Nayak and Zeitfracht then agreed to take over the maintenance arm, Air Berlin Technik, preserving about 300 jobs.[33] On October 27, 2017, easyJet signed an agreement to acquire part of the airline's operations at Berlin Tegel Airport for €40 million. The deal included leases on up to 25 Airbus A320 aircraft and slots, and easyJet planned to recruit about 1,000 Air Berlin pilots and cabin crew.[34] Winkelmann said that after the Lufthansa group, the company had concluded talks with "another heavyweight in the European airline industry", which was "good for airberliners, who receive attractive job opportunities in Berlin."[33]

Air Berlin's last flight, from Munich, landed at Tegel late on October 27, 2017, under the flight number BER4EVR.[33]

After the shutdown

Air Berlin had been in formal insolvency proceedings since November 2017. It had been widely expected that Winkelmann would leave soon after the airline collapsed. In April 2018, however, Manager Magazin reported that the creditors' representatives and the insolvency administrator had decided to keep him on for an indefinite period. His task was in particular to help identify and collect sums owed to Air Berlin, such as advance payments that airports had demanded in the airline's final months and that were partly refundable. The magazine noted that this removed the criticised scenario of his collecting the full €4.5 million of his four-year contract for a few months' work.[35] In August 2018 he was described as leaving Air Berlin at the end of that year.[8] JetBlue's filings give his Air Berlin tenure as 2017 through 2018.[10]

Zeitfracht, 2018 to present

From August 1, 2018, Winkelmann chaired the advisory board (Beirat) of Zeitfracht Luftfahrt Holding, the aviation holding company of the family-owned Berlin logistics group Zeitfracht. Zeitfracht chief Wolfram Simon said he had been chosen for his extensive aviation expertise. Simon also said that Leisure Cargo, the business Zeitfracht had bought from Air Berlin, employed 60 people and generated €127 million in annual revenue.[8]

When the group reorganised its management in March 2020 and appointed Dominik Wiehage chief executive from April 1, the trade paper trans aktuell reported that Winkelmann would continue to support the new executive board. A photo caption from the company gave his title as Generalbevollmächtigter (general representative). The group then had more than 3,000 employees and was active mainly in logistics, aviation and real estate.[36] In July 2020 Zeitfracht created a supervisory board with Winkelmann as chair. The other members were Thorsten Dirks, who had recently left the Lufthansa executive board and the leadership of Eurowings, and the insolvency administrator Hans-Gerd Jauch. The company said Winkelmann had been advising the group for three years.[9]

JetBlue's 2026 proxy statement lists his current role as Executive Chair of the Zeitfracht Group, a logistics company based in Berlin, and says he joined Zeitfracht in 2018.[10]

Leadership and management style

The 2007 Handelsblatt profile portrayed Winkelmann as deliberately unconventional within Lufthansa. "I am the freak," he said of himself, and he told the paper that it was part of his job at Germanwings to be different.[13] He described his ambition for the airline through online retail: "Germanwings should develop like Amazon. The offering has to be extended around the core product, the book or the flight." He meant rail connections, hotels and car hire. At the same time he refused to abandon low-cost principles such as direct internet sales and free seating: "Keep it simple. Complexity costs money."[14]

The paper also gave concrete examples of his cost discipline. The furniture in his office and throughout the Cologne/Bonn airport headquarters came from the bankruptcy estate of a call centre. His company car was a Mini Cooper in Germanwings livery, which staff could also use during the day.[14] To attract business travellers, who already made up 42 percent of passengers, he introduced a flexible fixed fare of €169 with free rebooking and cancellation.[14]

The same article recorded criticism. A business partner described his manner as an "American cowboy mentality: loud, casual, light-footed". The paper wrote that his big words had not yet been matched by big deeds, since the Dortmund base and the €19 fare campaign predated him. It also described him as a "lone fighter" who had little close contact with his fellow managing director, Joachim Klein.[14]

At Air Berlin his public statements stressed jobs and operational stability. During the pilot sick-out he warned that stable flying was the "compelling precondition" for a successful sale.[29] In each sale announcement he measured progress by the share of the workforce offered new employment.[27][2]

Major deals and strategic decisions

  • Germanwings expansion (2006 to 2015). Under Winkelmann, Germanwings took over Lufthansa's direct point-to-point routes outside its hubs, relaunched its fares and brand, and was led back to profitability before being merged into Eurowings.[15]
  • Air Berlin network cuts (2017). Air Berlin cut its route network from 387 to fewer than 100 routes, completed the move to an all-Airbus fleet, and transferred 35 leisure aircraft to Niki at the start of the summer 2017 schedule.[24]
  • Belair closure (2017). Air Berlin decided to shut down Belair at the end of the summer 2017 schedule and transfer its A321 aircraft to Niki.[23]
  • No state guarantee (June 2017). Winkelmann decided not to apply for a federal loan guarantee.[25]
  • JetBlue cooperation (August 2017). Air Berlin agreed connecting itineraries with JetBlue. JetBlue later disclosed that it had signed an interline traffic agreement and a special prorate agreement with Air Berlin in 2017. Their value was approximately $0 because of the insolvency. JetBlue also agreed to pay about $450,000 to lease Air Berlin's JFK slot pairs. JetBlue stated that Winkelmann had no direct or indirect material interest in either transaction.[26][16]
  • Insolvency and break-up (August to October 2017). Air Berlin filed for insolvency in self-administration on August 15, 2017, and sold Niki, LGW and 20 aircraft to Lufthansa (about €210 million), Leisure Cargo to Zeitfracht, Air Berlin Technik to Nayak and Zeitfracht, and Tegel operations to easyJet (€40 million).[6][31][32][34]

Financial and market performance

Winkelmann inherited a company in deep losses. For 2016, the year before he arrived, Air Berlin reported revenue of €3.79 billion, down from €4.08 billion in 2015. It reported an operating loss (EBIT) of €667.1 million against €307.0 million, restructuring costs of €334.8 million and a net loss of €781.9 million. The seat load factor was 84.3 percent.[24] The company said the first quarter of 2017 was also weighed down by the old business model, a ground handling strike at Tegel and problems with a new ground handling provider.[24] Headcount was about 7,500 when Winkelmann took over.[21] The airline did not survive his tenure. After the insolvency filing the creditors' process aimed at satisfying creditors as fully as possible, and the company said the sales gave a good chance of repaying the KfW loan.[27][2]

Board memberships and outside roles

Winkelmann was first nominated to the JetBlue board in 2013 as a designee of Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Lufthansa had bought about 19 percent of JetBlue's common stock in 2008, and because of that affiliation he was not then considered independent.[11] Lufthansa ceased to be a significant JetBlue shareholder after exchanging its €234 million of convertible notes in early 2015.[19] By 2018 the board classed him as independent.[16] He received $174,983 for his board service in 2017.[16]

As of the 2026 proxy statement, Winkelmann chairs JetBlue's Airline Safety Committee and sits on its Compensation Committee and its Governance and Nominating Committee. His 2025 director compensation was $256,748, consisting of $120,000 in fees, $134,994 in stock awards and $1,754 in other compensation. He beneficially owned 35,473 shares of common stock, or 148,237 including shares he had the right to acquire, as of March 20, 2026.[10] Shareholders re-elected him at the annual meeting on May 14, 2026, with 182,737,910 votes for and 17,862,344 against.[37]

His other roles have included the boards of Lufthansa CityLine and Air Dolomiti during his Lufthansa years, the advisory board chairmanship of Zeitfracht Luftfahrt Holding from 2018, and the supervisory board chairmanship of the Zeitfracht group from 2020.[16][8][9] He also served on the advisory board of the Hamburg Aviation Conference.[15]

Controversies

Two days after the insolvency filing, Der Spiegel reported, citing a shareholder protection group, that Winkelmann's contract was secured by a bank guarantee of up to €4.5 million. According to the latest annual report, his base salary was €950,000 a year and bonuses could double it.[38] In October 2017 Der Spiegel gave further details from the 2016 annual report. Winkelmann received a one-off payment of €300,000 to compensate for pension rights lost by leaving Lufthansa, and a guaranteed minimum bonus of €400,000 for 2017, payable in January 2018. His pay until January 31, 2021, was secured by the guarantee, and his contract could not be terminated before the end of January 2019.[7] Former chairman Körber had written in the report that departing from the normal remuneration policy had been necessary to win the manager "in this critical time". The company had stated that it had used its discretion to set up an appropriate package "in view of the exceptional and unexpected circumstances".[7]

The guarantee drew criticism as thousands of employees faced losing their jobs and federal states debated co-funding a transfer company for staff. SPD deputy leader Ralf Stegner told Handelsblatt that protecting huge executive salaries in insolvency had "nothing whatsoever to do with the social market economy". Christian Bäumler, deputy leader of the CDU's employee wing, said the guarantee should be reviewed and recovery rights possibly tightened. DGB chairman Reiner Hoffmann called it "a crying injustice". At protests outside the Tegel headquarters, employees carried a sign reading "4.5 million for Winkelmann! For us Hartz IV."[7] The later decision to keep him working for the insolvent company was reported as ending the scenario of full pay for a few months' work.[35]

Personal life

Winkelmann is married and has two children.[3] In 2007, while running Germanwings, he lived in Cologne while his wife and their two children lived in Berlin.[39]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 <ref>"Thomas Winkelmann neuer CEO von Air Berlin".Austrian Wings.December 18, 2016.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 <ref>"Air Berlin einigt sich mit Lufthansa-Group über Verkauf von Unternehmensteilen".Air Berlin.October 12, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 <ref>"Lufthansa ernennt Thomas Winkelmann zum Leiter in München".Austrian Wings.November 3, 2015.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 <ref>Hajer M'tiri and Ayhan Simsek."Fears grow for 150 people as plane crashes in France".Anadolu Agency.March 24, 2015.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 <ref>"Lufthansa chief visits crash site".April 3, 2015.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 <ref>"airberlin stellt Insolvenzantrag: Der Bund hilft, airberlin fliegt planmäßig weiter".Air Berlin.August 15, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 <ref>"Politiker prangern Millionengarantie für Airline-Chef an".October 18, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 <ref>Stefanie Nonnenmann."Personen des Tages, 6. August 2018".August 6, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 <ref>Katharina Spirkl."Personen des Tages, 31. Juli 2020".July 31, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 <ref>"JetBlue Airways Corporation 2026 Proxy Statement (Schedule 14A)".JetBlue Airways Corporation, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.April 2, 2026.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 <ref>"JetBlue Airways Corporation 2013 Proxy Statement (Schedule 14A)".JetBlue Airways Corporation, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.March 27, 2013.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 <ref>"Thomas Winkelmann steigt bei Germanwings ein".August 29, 2006.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 <ref>Tanja Kewes."Thomas Winkelmann: Ein frecher Vogel".June 26, 2007.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 <ref>Tanja Kewes."Thomas Winkelmann: Ein frecher Vogel (page 2)".June 26, 2007.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 <ref>"Mr Thomas Winkelmann".Hamburg Aviation Conference.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 <ref>"JetBlue Airways Corporation 2018 Proxy Statement (Schedule 14A)".JetBlue Airways Corporation, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.April 4, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  17. ↑ <ref>"Was Andreas Lubitz On Any Terror Lists? Lufthansa & Germanwings Are As Stumped As Everybody Else".Bustle.March 26, 2015.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  18. ↑ <ref>Bill Chappell."CEOs Of Germanwings, Lufthansa Visit Crash Site".April 1, 2015.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 <ref>"JetBlue Airways Corporation 2016 Proxy Statement (Schedule 14A)".JetBlue Airways Corporation, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.April 5, 2016.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 <ref>"airberlin Board ernennt neuen CEO".Air Berlin.December 18, 2016.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 <ref>"Thomas Winkelmann als CEO der airberlin group".Air Berlin.February 1, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  22. ↑ <ref>"Kickoff: airberlin startet Wetlease-Vereinbarung mit Lufthansa Gruppe".Air Berlin.February 10, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 <ref>"Weiterer Schritt bei Neustrukturierung der airberlin: Aus für Flugbetrieb der Belair zum Ende des Sommerflugplans 2017".Air Berlin.March 7, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 <ref>"airberlin Finanzergebnis 2016 und erstes Quartal 2016: Fortschritte beim Umbau der airberlin".Air Berlin.April 28, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 <ref>"airberlin: Kein Antrag auf Staatsbürgschaft".Air Berlin.June 21, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 <ref>"Neuer Partner in den USA: airberlin kooperiert mit JetBlue".Air Berlin.August 4, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 <ref>"Aktueller Stand der Bietergespräche für airberlin".Air Berlin.September 25, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  28. ↑ <ref>"Insolvenzverfahren in Eigenverwaltung wird fortgeführt".Air Berlin.August 23, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 <ref>Stefan Eiselin."Air Berlin warnt vor Grounding".September 12, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  30. ↑ <ref>"32 Air Berlin flights cancelled on Wednesday after pilots call in sick (again)".September 13, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 <ref>"Lufthansa spreads wings by snapping up parts of Air Berlin".October 12, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 <ref>"Zeitfracht übernimmt airberlin Tochter Leisure Cargo".Air Berlin.October 24, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 <ref>Steve Creedy."EasyJet takes up to 25 planes as airberlin lands last flight".AirlineRatings.October 28, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 <ref>"easyJet signs agreement with Air Berlin".easyJet.October 27, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 <ref>Michael Machatschke."Letzter Chef von Air Berlin muss für Millionengehalt doch noch etwas tun".April 20, 2018.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  36. ↑ <ref>Ilona Jüngst."Dominik Wiehage neuer CEO: Zeitfracht Gruppe mit neuer Führungsstruktur".March 25, 2020.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  37. ↑ <ref>"JetBlue Airways Corporation Form 8-K, Item 5.07".JetBlue Airways Corporation, via U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.May 20, 2026.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  38. ↑ <ref>"Insolvenz: Gehalt von Air-Berlin-Chef abgesichert".August 16, 2017.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
  39. ↑ <ref>Tanja Kewes."Thomas Winkelmann: Ein frecher Vogel (page 3)".June 26, 2007.Retrieved October 29, 2026.</ref>
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