Air New Zealand appoints ABM Aviation head as chief operations officer, internal manager as alliances boss

Alexandria (Alex) Marren has led aviation services company ABM Aviation. Photo / Supplied

Air New Zealand has appointed the head of a big United States aviation services company to the key role of chief operating officer as part of the next stage of its executive refresh.

Alexandria (Alex) Marren will replace Carrie Hurihanganui who will start as chief executive at Auckland International Airport next month.

The airline has appointed within the company with Mike Williams taking up the new role as chief transformation and alliances officer, focused on strategy and alliance partner relationships, critical as Air New Zealand recovers from the impact of the Covid on its international network.

Marren is expected to join the airline in late March as COO, following a 36-year career in senior operations, customer, cabin crew and airport leadership roles at Air NZ alliance partner United Airlines and Hertz Corporation.

She is currently the president of ABM Aviation in Atlanta where she has been leading 11,000 staff to help airlines at airports across the US, Britain, Ireland and the Middle East navigate through the Covid pandemic.

ABM provides services "from the parking lot to the airplane", with many of those jobs outsourced from airline staff.

Its aviation division is part of a much bigger group ABM offer a wide variety of services including: janitorial, energy solutions, landscape and turf, electrical and mechanical, building technical administration, and parking and transportation across many industries.

Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran says both appointments further equip the airline's executive team with the skills and experience to help the airline emerge strongly from the pandemic and deliver improved results.

"Alex will bring firsthand experience of operations at scale in highly competitive markets across North America. She has a track record of delivering operational performance and results that delight customers and staff, and we look forward to welcoming her to Air New Zealand."

Marren has a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College and has completed the advanced education programme at The Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

In 2019 she told Runwaygirlnetwork.com that she developed an interest on aviation at primary school.

"When I was 6-years-old, my family and I flew to Greece on a TWA 747," she said. "I was fascinated by every aspect of the experience and amazed at how aviation truly connected the world [and] this made a deep and lasting impression on me. In high school, I took my interest a step further and did my science project on how planes flew and when I graduated from college … I jumped at the chance to work for a new airline called PEOPLExpress. And the rest, as they say, is history," she told the website.

On the morning of the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 was on her way to work as the director of customer service planning with United Airlines when the first plane struck the World Trade Centre.

After that she was part of the response team in the airline's emergency crisis centre, liaising with the FBI and organising teams to help families of those aboard the airline's two planes used in the attacks.

Mike Williams has a degree in aerospace engineering and a background in commerce. Photo / Supplied

Williams has been with Air New Zealand since 2016 in senior commercial and strategy roles and is currently group general manager commercial, Alliances and Strategy.

Before joining the airline he worked with the Boston Consulting Group in Australia, Finland and the US, working with clients in the aviation, technology and retail sectors.

He holds a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering and a Bachelor of Business Management from RMIT University, Melbourne.

Foran described Williams as one of the airline's most talented senior leaders, who has "a deep understanding of our business and the sector, supported by a sharp strategic ability that served Air New Zealand well as it established key alliance partnerships.

''Having helped develop, and more recently led the review of, our Kia Mau (Get Ready) strategy, Mike will lead the transformation programme to look at our ways of working to support the delivery of our strategy."

Foran also paid tribute to Hurihanganui.

"I want to share a huge thank you to Carrie who has shown such exceptional leadership over more than 20 years with the airline. It really is a win for Auckland International Airport, and we wish her all the best in her new role."

The new appointments refresh an executive almost unrecognisable from what it was as the pandemic struck with only chief operational integrity and safety officer David Morgan remaining from the pre-Foran era.

The airline is rated ''underperform'' by Forsyth Barr with border reopening deferral and the threat of an Omicron outbreak impacting the demand outlook. Losses and cash burn will continue through the second half of the financial year at elevated rates.

''Consequently, the flagged equity raise (due by end of March 2022) is increasingly likely to be delayed again with the backstop, a redeemable share offer to the government, increasingly likely as a short-term measure to buffer equity capital,'' Forsyth Barr says.