Visibility and Green Choices Define Aviation’s New Era.
Aviation CEO Annette Mann Drives Inclusion and Green Choices for Industry Resilience and Consumer Trust.
Breaking Barriers in a Male-Dominated Industry
Annette Mann is one of only a handful of women leading a global airline. As CEO of Austrian Airlines, she faces an industry where just 7% of the CEOs at the world’s top 100 airlines are women (2022). Her career demonstrates that aviation leadership need not remain the preserve of men. She stresses that diversity is not symbolic—it changes decision-making and helps aviation adapt to new challenges. Mann argues that making women’s achievements more visible is essential.
We really try to encourage younger women to do something where others can actually see and feel their work. Being more visible is super important at such an early stage,” she notes.
Creating Structures For Female Leadership
To build a pipeline of women leaders, Austrian Airlines has set up scholarships, tandem leadership roles, and shared jobs. Teams are designed so women in their late 20s and early 30s can take leadership responsibility without being forced to drop out of the sector. Female pilots are given visibility in schools and career events to show that flying is not only a male career track.
Mann insists on direct experience: in communications, HR, and sustainability teams, women work on projects visible to senior managers, building reputation and readiness for higher responsibility.
Sustainability as The Other Challenge
Diversity is matched by a second imperative: sustainability. Aviation remains one of the most energy-intensive industries. Mann emphasizes that consumer expectations are shifting, with 46% of German 18- to 34-year-olds listing flying as their preferred vacation travel mode in 2022 (YouGov), but they also want greener options.
Austrian Airlines, within Lufthansa Group, is tied into about 15 partnerships exploring sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Contracts guarantee purchases if suppliers invest in production, creating market pull. But Mann is clear that SAF is still expensive and often misunderstood. She points out that many travelers think avoiding flights is the only option, without realizing that paying an extra €100 for SAF may be cheaper than the hidden costs of alternatives such as hotel nights added by train journeys.
Resetting After The Pandemic
Mann took the top job during the turbulence of Covid-19. Austrian Airlines had lost 20% of its staff, with planes in storage and operations down to 10%. By summer 2022, through rehiring, redeployment, and close coordination with airports and regulators, she brought operations back to 80–90%.
That recovery allowed Austrian Airlines to repay state aid and return to growth. For Mann, this experience showed that resilience depends on leadership clarity, stakeholder trust, and the ability to align culture with operational urgency.
Redefining Customer Structures
Post-pandemic, Austrian Airlines sees fewer corporate travelers and more private, blended, and remote-work groups. Tourists, family travelers, and digital workers now define routes.
For Mann, this shift again connects back to inclusion and sustainability: new customer groups want purpose, identity, and greener choices built into the brand. She argues that making aviation resilient requires not only technology adoption but also cultural change that addresses how diverse groups experience travel.
Recommendations
Codify Visibility: CEOs must design systems where women’s achievements are seen, not hidden. Visibility is infrastructure for inclusion.
Engineer Pathways: Create tandem and shared leadership roles to prevent female attrition in critical career stages.
Translate Sustainability: Make the real costs of flying, trains, and SAF transparent. Remove misconceptions through clear consumer education.
Invest In Partnerships: Build binding supply contracts for sustainable fuels to accelerate scaling.
Reset Operations With Culture: Tie resilience to cultural clarity during crises, recovery depends on shared trust as much as process.
Bottom Line: Inclusion And Sustainability are Aviation’s Survival Codes
Annette Mann shows that the future of aviation will not be won on aircraft alone. Firms that fail to make women’s leadership visible or that dodge the cost of greener fuels risk losing consumer loyalty and investor trust. Those that build inclusion into their workforce and sustainability into their business model will not only survive volatility but also redefine what resilience in aviation looks like.
