Lufthansa Flight Training

Florian Hamm
Florian Hamm was born on 26 June 1954 in Lausanne, Switzerland and joined the company in December 2000. He has been the Managing Director of Lufthansa Flight Training GmbH since December 2005. In October 2000, only two months prior to joining the company, he had returned to Bremen to head the pilot training school where he himself had qualified to become a pilot.

Florian Hamm began his career at Lufthansa in 1976 with his training at the Lufthansa Flight Training Pilot School. In 1978 he began flying as a First Officer on Boeing 737, Douglas DC 8 and Boeing 747 aircraft. In 1989 he qualified as an Aircraft Accident Investigator after three years at the University of Southern California. Until 1992 he was employed as an Assistant to Lufthansa Direct Operations before moving to SunExpress in 1994, where he initially held the position of Head of Operations and Maintenance. He subsequently assumed the function of Managing Director; a position that he held from 1996 until October 2000. He also flies as a Captain on the Airbus A380 since 2010.

Ludwig Merkel, Dipl. Volkswirt
Ludwig Merkel was born on 8 September 1953 in Heidelberg, Germany and is the Managing Director of Lufthansa Flight Training GmbH since 1997. He is responsible for the Finance, Human Resources, IT, Marketing and Sales divisions.

After graduating as an economist from the University of Heidelberg, he joined Lufthansa in 1978 as an Administrator for Capacities Planning in the Lufthansa Service Group. In 1987, after initially having moved to the Group's Financial Controlling department in 1981, he was promoted to the position of Assistant to the Executive Board for Planning, Controlling and Traffic Operations. As of 1990, he led various departments of Lufthansa's "Flight Personnel Training" division, and in 1997, he became a member of the Management Board of the newly founded Lufthansa Flight Training GmbH.