Lufthansa Technik Gets a New CEO: Harald Gloy Takes Over From Soeren Stark in February

Lufthansa Technik will have a new chief executive next year. The company's supervisory board has appointed Harald Gloy, currently chief operating officer, to a five-year term as CEO starting February 1, 2027. He replaces Soeren Stark, who is retiring on the same date after leading the business since 2022.

For most travelers, Lufthansa Technik is invisible. But it's the largest independent aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul company in the world, and it works on far more than Lufthansa Group jets. If you've flown a long-haul aircraft from a major European, Asian, or Middle Eastern carrier, there's a reasonable chance Technik has had its hands on it at some point.

Who Harald Gloy is

Gloy is 54, an engineer by training who studied in Berlin and the United States, and he has spent more than 25 years at Lufthansa Technik in one form or another. His career has touched most of the company's core businesses: logistics, corporate strategy, aircraft and engine overhaul, and components. He left for Lufthansa Cargo in 2019 as COO, picked up the human resources portfolio there in 2021, and came back to Technik in 2022 as COO and Accountable Manager, the regulatory role responsible for the company's maintenance approvals.

Grazia Vittadini, Lufthansa Group's chief technology officer and chair of Technik's supervisory board, described him as combining deep knowledge of the company with broad leadership experience across the group. That's the standard phrasing for an internal promotion, but in Gloy's case it's accurate. He's run the operational side of the business for four years and knows where the bodies are buried.

What Stark leaves behind

Soeren Stark, 59, joined Lufthansa Group in 2001 as a plant manager for LSG Sky Chefs at Frankfurt Airport, which is an unusual entry point for someone who ended up running the group's engineering arm. He moved to Technik, led its logistics subsidiary, ran aircraft overhaul, did a stint as COO of Lufthansa Cargo, and became Technik's COO in 2019 before taking the top job three years later.

His tenure coincided with the post-pandemic maintenance boom. Airlines kept older aircraft flying longer than planned because new jets were late, and that meant more heavy checks, more engine shop visits, and more component work. Technik grew substantially on his watch, and two projects in particular will define the handover.

The projects Gloy inherits

The first is AeroSHARK, the drag-reducing riblet film that Technik developed with Surventis. It's on 22 Lufthansa Group Boeing 777s and is now in final certification for the Airbus A330, with a Discover Airlines A330-300 as the test aircraft. Gloy's challenge is turning it from a Lufthansa Group efficiency project into a product that other airlines pay for at scale.

The second is Portugal. Technik broke ground in June on a 55,000-square-meter facility in Santa Maria da Feira, near Porto, that will repair engine parts and components. It's a three-digit-million-euro investment that should create about 700 jobs when it opens in 2028, and it became part of the pitch when Lufthansa Group won the bidding for a stake in TAP Air Portugal this week. Getting that plant built on time and staffed is Gloy's job now.

Why it matters to passengers

A CEO change at a maintenance company isn't going to change your boarding experience. But Technik's work shows up in things passengers do notice: how reliably older aircraft stay in service, how fast retrofits like Allegris get done, and how much fuel a jet burns. Lufthansa's entire premium push depends on Technik delivering cabin conversions on schedule, and the group's 737 MAX 10 order and TAP ambitions both add work to its books.

Gloy's successor as COO hasn't been named. The supervisory board says it will decide as soon as possible.