Ursula Silling
Aviation expert and former CCO, Aerosvit Ukrainian Airlines
In 2009 Ursula was CCO and member of the Executive Committee with Aerosvit Ukrainian Airlines, the biggest carrier in Ukraine that has developed Kiev as a hub for shorthaul and longhaul operations. Her responsibilities included global sales and distribution, ground services, revenue management, marketing, PR, network development, codeshare partners, bilateral and industrial relations, marketing, product development, staff travel and commercial technologies. In this economically extremely tough year for any airline Ursula revised the network concept and distribution and marketing strategy of Aerosvit and built a professional revenue management team with related processes. She also introduced modern working processes as a basis for a sustainable growth, reduced cost, developed new revenue streams, developed a commercial strategy for the future positioning and rebuilt the team to achieve best possible results.
Ursula joined the Virgin Express and SN Brussels Airlines group in October 2005 as Executive Vice President Commercial, in charge of global sales, distribution and marketing. She developed the b.flex / b.light product concept for Brussels Airlines, taking account of the changed travel patterns of consumers and increased low cost competition. She managed successfully the rebranding and repositioning for Virgin Express and SN Brussels Airlines as part of the merger. Ursula also introduced a marketing concept for the important African markets of Brussels Airlines.
From 2003 to 2005, Ursula was Commercial Director at HLX / Hapag Lloyd Express in Germany , contributing to a great deal to the successful growth of the young low cost airline that was only started in December 2002 in a very competitive environment. Her responsibilities included network development, revenue management, e-commerce, marketing, sales and product and cabin services.
She was Director Account Management for Lufthansa Systems before, building structures for customer service delivery and successful sales. She also worked for Deutsche BA in the British Airways Group for seven years from 1994 to 2001 in commercial and strategic senior management positions. Among others, she implemented an alliance strategy and initiated and project managed the revalidation of the Deutsche BA strategy for the board proposal in June 2000.
After her studies Ursula worked as General Manager for Optimal Reisen, a regional tour operator alliance in Northern Germany. She also worked for an exclusive niche tour operator in London and in the Controlling and Route Management and Charter Department with Lufthansa City Line during her studies.
Ursula speaks fluently English, French, German (mother tongue), she has a good knowledge of Spanish, Italian, Russian and Dutch. She studied economics and international management as part of a quadronational Business Programme between Germany, France, Spain and the UK. She spent two years in the UK and achieved degrees as Diplombetriebswirtin and BA (Hons) European Business Studies. She was among the top 5% of her year.
