Cologne-based airline German Airways is strengthening its management team with the appointment of Axel Schefe as Chief Technology Officer, effective April 1, 2026. With this personnel decision, Germany's second-oldest airline, which primarily operates in the wet-lease segment for well-known European airlines, aims to structurally solidify its technical organization.
Schefe, a graduate engineer in aerospace engineering, brings almost two decades of industry experience to the company. Since 2007, he has held various management positions, including a focus on strategic technical procurement and fleet management, which is considered essential for the operational performance of German Airways' Embraer E190 fleet.
Before joining German Airways in Cologne, Axel Schefe served as Managing Director of the Estonian airline Marabu. There, he was responsible for the demanding development phase of the organization and the stabilization of operational processes in a dynamic market environment. This expertise in process optimization will now be leveraged at German Airways to intensify collaboration between the various operational units. A key aspect of his responsibilities will also be the strategic realignment of the technical division. The company plans to systematically expand beyond its own maintenance services into third-party technical business, thereby developing new revenue streams in the area of maintenance services.
Industry experts view the appointment as a signal for the expansion strategy of the airline, which belongs to the Zeitfracht Group. By consolidating technical responsibility in a dedicated managing director position, German Airways underscores its ambition to establish maintenance capabilities as an independent success factor. Maren Wolters, also a managing director of the company, emphasized the significance of this personnel change for the overall development. Since German Airways operates as a service provider for major scheduled airlines, the high technical reliability of its aircraft is the most important selling point in the highly competitive wet-lease market, where punctuality rates and maintenance standards determine contract renewals.
German Airways' technical division encompasses not only direct maintenance but also airworthiness management and coordination with external maintenance facilities. With Schefe at the helm, technical documentation and spare parts management are to be further professionalized. The airline currently operates with a standardized fleet, enabling synergies in warehousing and technical personnel training. Systematically developing third-party customers for its own maintenance facility at the Cologne/Bonn site could make the company less dependent on pure flight hour revenue in the long term and deepen its value chain within the Zeitfracht logistics group.