Location Houston, Texas, United States Regions Greater Houston Area, Southern US Gender Male
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Benjamin Smith is a recognized leader in international air transport. He spent the last 20 years with Air Canada where he was President Airlines and Chief Operating Officer .
He began his career in 1990 at Air Ontario in parallel with his studies and in 1992 established his own travel company for business. He successfully led this
entrepreneurial experience for 8 years. In 1999, he took on a consulting role for Air Canada and finally joined the group in 2002.
Since joining the firm in 2002, Benjamin Smith has held several senior positions at Air Canada: successively Chief Commercial Officer, Director of Network Planning, before joining Air Canada's Executive Management Team in 2007.
During his career, he has developed strong management, strategy, relationship management, marketing, financial and operational management skills. He was, in particular, the architect of the development and modernization of Air Canada. It has defined and implemented Air Canada's transformation strategy over the past ten years, put in place the Air Canada Group network expansion project around the world, and radically renewed the fleet in terms of the number of Air Canada appliances and energy efficiency. As part of its responsibilities, it has also redefined Air Canada's hub strategy with three major hubs based on the company's markets. Benjamin Smith is also behind Air Canada Rouge,
Benjamin Smith has been particularly engaged in social dialogue at Air Canada. He has personally managed with the Directorate of Human Resources collective bargaining with the unions. These negotiations led to the conclusion of long-term, win-win historical agreements for the company, employees and all stakeholders.
In 2014, he was named President Airlines (Air Canada, Rouge, Express, Cargo) and Chief Operating Officer of the Air Canada Group. He has assumed overall responsibility for commercial affairs, operations and customer service for the Group. He also led the strategy and operational and financial performance of Air Canada.
On August 16, 2018, Benjamin Smith is appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Air France-KLM Group.
