Industry veteran Lloyd Paxton, has taken over as CEO of Hungarian airline, Malev, as previous incumbent, Dr Janos Gonci, leaves the carrier by mutual agreement but remains a member of the board of directors.
Malev, for many years the state airline, has been owned since February this year by AirBridge, a Russian investor and in April joined the oneworld alliance. It has a modern fleet of Boeing 737 ”new generation” aircraft for European routes and Boeing 767s on its limited long haul operations.
From 1960, Lloyd Paxton worked for 35 years at British Airways (BA) in a variety of consultative and managerial positions, including heading up such key areas as manager operational security and emergency response, manager safety and security, and overseas area and regional manager.
Later with BA, Paxton held important positions in both executive and advisory roles including international commercial activities, customer service, ground handling, government relations, airport safety and passenger security, airline operations and administration.
He gained further senior managerial experience as founder president and CEO of Air Astana (established 2002), the national carrier of Kazakhstan, and under his leadership the airline expanded dynamically and secured a profitable operation. He resigned from that position last year.