As an airline pilot with more than 6,000 flight hours under her belt, safety and risk-management consultant, and now chief executive of a business aviation operator taking a novel, digital-led approach to managing clients’ assets, Kerstin Mumenthaler is in at least her third career.
She has run Axis Aviation since early last year, having joined the Zurich-based management and charter provider in 2023 after meeting and impressing founder Niall Olver when she was a board member at her local flying club, based at an airfield where the entrepreneur parked his Bombardier Learjet.
After becoming safety manager at the newly formed company, Mumenthaler quickly rose to accountable manager and managing director. In February 2025, when Olver moved to a less hands-on role as chairman to focus on his Austrian-based full-flight simulator manufacturer venture, he appointed her chief executive.
OPERATIONS HUB
She is responsible for around 70 employees – at a head office in Zurich and operations hub in Vienna – and some 15 managed aircraft, flying on Austrian and San Marino air operator certificates. They include Bombardier Globals, Gulfstreams, and Dassault Aviation Falcons, with around half available on charter.
Mumenthaler, who grew up in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, did not come from an aviation family but recalls being told that, aged three, she announced to her grandfather that she wanted to become a pilot. Later, on birthdays, she asked to be taken to Frankfurt airport to watch airliners.
“No-one in my family had anything to do with aviation, but I spent my childhood on airport viewing platforms,” she says. However, even back then she knew that flying alone would not be enough: “I wanted to become involved in other aspects of aviation management.”
She completed a degree in safety management and worked as a flight attendant while taking flying lessons. She later obtained her air transport pilot’s licence and completed her masters thesis after in 2005 joining Air Berlin as an Airbus A320 first officer. Soon – drawing on her academic background – she became a member of its small team responsible for safety protocols.
It was when airlines were beginning to put in place safety management systems. “I was lucky in that I was starting out as all this culture was being implemented,” she says. “It was theory meeting practice for the first time.”
She stayed with Air Berlin for 12 years until the airline collapsed in 2017. By that time, she had a one-year-old son and did not want to fly full time. However, part-time pilot jobs were hard to come by, so she embarked on what was to become her second career.
Since 2012, she had been combining working for Air Berlin with offering her services as an independent risk management consultant in the insurance, banking and medical sectors, as well as for aviation companies. When Air Berlin ceased trading, “my plan B became my plan A”, she says.
She had been doing consultancy as her main job for six years when, while advising on safety at her flying club, she encountered Olver, who was keen to get back into aviation after selling his business aviation services company ExecuJet to Luxaviation in 2015. They began chatting about his aspirations.
After beginning at Axis Aviation with a predominantly operational, safety-focused role, her promotion to chief executive has meant her “shifting my attention to the commercial side”. She is more involved in financial matters and there is a lot of “client interface”.
She is also managing a larger team across two locations, but it is a responsibility she relishes. Every second week she travels from her home in Zurich to Vienna and talks to her colleagues. “I’m a big fan of these personal connections,” she says. “And it’s not just about formal meetings. People will tell you things at the coffee break.”
She still finds time to fly – both for leisure and occasionally for Axis: she is rated on Learjets and is about to add Embraer Phenoms. “I don’t really regard flying as working,” she jokes. “Flying is time for myself.”
At Axis, she is putting in place Olver’s vision of a data-driven aircraft management business, where owners can track the financial and operational performance of their aircraft in real time via an integrated, proprietary platform.
“It’s true asset management,” she says. “We have a vision that we want to revolutionise this industry and not just be another operator, by giving power and control to the owner. Data means power. You just have to connect the dots.”
Reflecting on her 20-year career as a woman pilot and business leader, she pays tribute to former senior colleagues who “were 100% supportive and did not believe that being female was a hindrance – they gave me self-confidence”.
SLOW PROGRESS
She believes the gender imbalance in aviation is shifting slowly but still has a way to go: only a few weeks ago, security staff at an airport’s fast-track lane refused to believe she was a pilot.
But she has used it to her advantage in networking situations. “When I have attended conferences as the only woman, I know I will be recognised next time,” Mumenthaler says. She admits it will be a time before being female in many aviation professions is no longer seen as unusual, but until then, she will “carry on with a smile”.
