The leading eVTOL startup Lilium announced that Klaus Roewe, industry veteran from Airbus and former leader of one of the most profitable commercial aircraft programs, is to replace the co-founder and current CEO Daniel Wiegand as CEO effective on 1 August 2022. Daniel Wiegand will continue as Lilium’s Chief Engineer for Innovation and Future Programs and as a Board Director.
During his 30 years at Airbus, Klaus Roewe has spearheaded all phases of the life cycle of a commercial aircraft across Engineering, Manufacturing, Program management and Customer Support. He led Airbus’ most important business line, the A320 and A320neo programs.
Daniel and his co-founders launched the company in 2015, designing and proving out a novel eVTOL jet architecture. Since then, the company has gone from a start-up to a Nasdaq-listed company with over 800 employees.
Klaus Roewe is not the first Airbus veteran joining eVTOL startup in Europe. Former Airbus CEO, Tom Enders, joined Lilium as the Chairman of the board last year. In March this year Dirk Hoke, former CEO of Airbus Defence & Space, was announced as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Volocopter, starting September 2022. In January this year Shanghai-based eVTOL startup Autoflight annouced today that they have set up a reseasrch, development and certification center in Augsburg, Germany, and will apply for EASA certification of their V1500M 4-seat eVTOL. The former head of Airbus EC135 and H145 projects Mark Henning joined as the head of Autoflight Europe.