The deputy chief executive for customer relations at Russia’s Aeroflot, Vadim Zingman, has left the company, a source close to the national air carrier has said, according to RIA Novosti.
Zingman was the second most influential person at Russia’s largest airline, after Aeroflot’s chief executive Vitaly Savelyev. The source has not specified his new occupation.
Aeroflot has been making heavy losses lately, despite expanding its network and adding frequencies. The company is facing growing competition, tough economic environment and rising fuel prices.
Zingman joined Aeroflot in 2009, the same year the company was first headed by Saveliev. From that moment until 2011, Zingman had held the post of counselor to the chief executive and deputy general director for operations and product quality management, before assuming the position of deputy chief executive for customer relations in February 2012.
Before joining the airline, Zingman had held the positions of deputy director of the department of state regulation of foreign trade at Russia’s ministry of economy, and director of the government relations department at Sistema Public Joint Stock Financial Corporation. He started working with Saveliev after his time at the ministry of economic development (the head of Aeroflot had served as deputy minister from 2004 to 2007).
This is not the first resignation of top Aeroflot managers in the last couple of years. Giorgio Callegari, Aeroflot’s deputy chief executive of strategy and alliances, left the company in March 2018; then, in September of the same year, Dmitry Saprykin became chief executive at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. Furthermore, Shamil Kurmashov, the company’s deputy chief executive of commerce and finance, resigned in May of last year.
