Aer Lingus to introduce new titles and departments

ONE MORE THING: AER LINGUS is planning a shake- up of its executive team. After an extensive review of its structures, the airline has concluded that its needs to "deepen" its leadership capability in customer service and IT at executive level.

Fergus Wilson has been confirmed as chief operating officer, having served in the role on an interim basis since July.

Enda Corneille, who has been through a number of management reshuffles in recent years, is taking a one-year sabbatical to concentrate on his MBA studies. Corneille was director of shared services, a function that is being axed.

Aer Lingus is creating three new roles – general counsel, chief technology officer and customer experience executive.

The customer experience executive will be responsible for ensuring that its “product proposition and delivery” is up to snuff. The role will incorporate inflight services, ground operations and catering.

The general counsel role has been established to bring legal expertise to the executive.

This makes sense given the various legal spats that Aer Lingus seems to find itself in.

Just yesterday, Ryanair fired off a missive in relation to its demand for an egm on the controversial “leave and return” redundancy scheme.

In addition to all this, the human resources function has been renamed as the people and change team, a rather American- sounding title. Current HR chief Michael Grealy (left) will thus become the chief people and change officer. These changes will take effect on January 1st.

In the meantime, Aer Lingus will seek to recruit for the new roles, both internally and externally. Staff have been told that this will be done without adding to the cost of management at the company.

Ryanair and Michael O’Leary will be pleased.