The upcoming new Air Canada CEO Dutchman Anko van der Werff has built a highly mobile, international curriculum vitae over a twenty-five-year career in commercial aviation, establishing himself as a specialized restructuring expert. His professional trajectory is defined by a solid educational foundation, a decade-long climb through the legacy Dutch system, and highly complex CEO roles across Latin America and Scandinavia.
Born in the Netherlands in 1975, van der Werff pursued a traditional academic path, earning a master’s degree in law from Leiden University. He later complemented this legal training with executive business studies at Harvard Business School. He began his career in 2000 with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. Over the next ten years, he held various commercial and managerial roles during a crucial era that saw the historic merger of Air France and KLM. His time with the group included a posting to Stockholm as the regional manager for Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics, as well as a commercial director role in the United Kingdom.
Following a four-year stint as senior vice president of pricing and revenue management at Qatar Airways, van der Werff shifted his focus to the Latin American market. In 2014, he joined Aeroméxico as executive vice president and chief commercial officer, where he drove commercial strategy, alliance expansion, and revenue optimization for five years. His performance in Mexico led to his first major chief executive appointment in 2019, when he was named CEO of Avianca Group, Colombia’s flag carrier. His tenure at Avianca was marked by intense crisis management, as he had to navigate the airline through the devastating operational halts of the global pandemic and shepherd the group through a highly complex, pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring in the United States.
In July 2021, van der Werff returned to Scandinavia to become the president and CEO of SAS. His time at SAS has been a masterclass in modern airline stabilization. He steered the carrier through its own Chapter 11 process, renegotiated expensive aircraft leases, brought in new investment led by Air France-KLM, and successfully transitioned the airline out of the Star Alliance and into SkyTeam. This extensive track record of financial restructuring, corporate diplomacy, and global network management ultimately made him Air Canada’s choice to lead the airline through its next phase of transformation.
