Alex Cruz

Alex is the CEO at Vueling (www.vueling.com). He was previously CEO at clickair.

In the summer of 2006, Alex was named clickair's founding CEO; during the following 3 years, he drove the airline through an incredible growth cycle, including a rapid transition from 0 to 26 A320s, 720 employees, and 58 domestic and Europe-wide international routes. In July of 2009, he successfully merged clickair with Vueling, turning the new Vueling into Spain’s second largest airline, an €800m company transporting eleven million passengers over 92 routes in 45 airports. Described as one of the "few succesful airline mergers" by industry analysts, Alex has led a complex integration process of two different airline cultures which has resulted in a $100m operating profit in the first nine months of 2009.

Alex started his professional career with American Airlines in variety of management roles in Dallas, and later on, London over a period of 10 years. In the year 2000, he initiated the consulting phase of his career with Arthur D. Little and two years later, created his own aviation consulting company. As a consultant, he has led projects with many airlines around the world, from British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Delta, Continental, and Ansett Australia, as well as for other travel companies like lastminute.com, BAA, Swissport and Amadeus. In late 2004, Alex became Accenture's partner leading Europe's aviation practice where he led the creation and start-up of clickair, Europe's fastest growing airline.

Alex, 46, is originally from Bilbao, Spain. He graduated as an industrial engineer from Central Michigan University. Later, he obtained a Masters of Science degree from The Ohio State University, specializing in e-business applications for small/medium size enterprises (1990). He also completed business administration and management courses at the Edwin Cox School of Business in Dallas. He is married and has 4 children.

• Spanish

1. Aviation
2. Business Strategy
3. Start-ups
4. Airlines
5. Airports
6. Strategy
7. Business Planning
8. Program Management
9. Management
10. Outsourcing
11. Management Consulting
12. Project Planning
13. Aerospace
14. Mergers
15. Change Management

Websites:

• Company Website
• My URL

Interests:

Symphonic choir singing, writing, spending time with family (married with four children) Languages • Native Spanish speaker • Native fluency in English • Strong knowledge of French and Italian