Dr. Burkard Wigger to be appointed Vice President of Austrian Airlines Technical Department

Dr. Burkard Wigger (49) is take over as Vice President of Austrian Airlines' Technical Department from 1 September 2008.

In his new function, Dr. Wigger will assume overall responsibility for the Technical Department of Austrian Airlines AG, which maintains the aircraft belonging to the Austrian Airlines Group, in addition to numerous aircraft of national and international airline clients from its location at Vienna Airport.

Dr. Wigger will take over the role from Austrian's current Executive Vice President of Technical Department, Walter Hechenberger, who began his career as an aircraft technician with Lauda Air in 1985, where he managed the Technical Services Division from 1990 onwards. Fundamental milestones in his career as a Technical Services Manager have included the successful merger of the Technical Services Divisions of Austrian Airlines and Lauda Air in 2003, expansion of third-party business (which recently resulted in an extensive cooperation with Lufthansa Technik) and development of a number of subsidiaries such as those in Bratislava. Walter Hechenberger grew Austrian TechniK into a thriving, forward-looking aircraft maintenance operation.

Dr. Burkard Wigger joins Austrian Airlines from German leisure airline Condor, where he has been advancing the development of a new, Frankfurt-based aircraft maintenance operation since the middle of last year. Following the successful conclusion of the project, he handed over the technical division to be managed by newly-founded Condor Technik GmbH. Before this, he was responsible for flight and technical operations as one of the two managing directors of Condor Berlin GmbH. After graduating from the University of Kaiserslautern as an electrical engineer, Burkard Wigger received his doctorate in 1988 from the Institute for High Frequency Technology of the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. The native of the Rhineland began his career with Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg, before switching to Frankfurt in 1993, where he held a number of positions in aircraft maintenance and flight operations at Lufthansa.

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