Patrick Artiel was recently named Lufthansa’s Passenger Sales General Manager for Romania and the Republic of Moldova. He replaces Stefan Versemann, who has held this position since 2007. Artiel was scheduled to hold a press conference in Bucharest tomorrow ( February 9 ), but the meeting was delayed to an as yet unannounced date.

Patrick Artiel was previously General Manager at Lufthansa, Austrian, BMI and Swiss Netherlands between January 2010 and January 2012, General Manager at Lufthansa / Swiss Netherlands - between January 2007 and July 2010, and Sales Manager Belgium/Luxembourg at Swiss Int'l Air Lines - between January and August 2005. See his entire CV here.

Lufthansa announced that it will introduce four weekly flights connecting Bucharest to Berlin from June this year, and will also double its capacity for the Sibiu flight, from the current seven weekly flights, to 14.

Lufthansa had 615,000 passengers on the Romanian market in 2010, 10 percent more than in 2009. The airline is part of the Lufthansa group, that also includes Swiss Airlines, Austrian Airlines and Germanwings.

In Romania, the group was operating  140 weekly flights during 2011, most of them ( 97 ) via Lufthansa, a further 44 through Austrian Airlines and 7 through Swiss Airlines.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com