airBaltic will be picking a new board of directors shortly.

RIGA — Latvia’s state-owned airline airBaltic is removing its top executives from the board of directors, which according to the company will improve the efficiency of management.

Until now, the persons elected in the board – the chairman and three board members – were simultaneously carrying out duties of the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief operations officer and chief commercial officer. After the reorganization, they have terminated their work in their elected posts of the board. From now on, Bertolt Flick will be fulfilling the duties of the president and the CEO; Mārtiņš Antonovičs — the duties of the chief financial officer; Laila Odiņa – the duties of the chief operations officer; Tero Taskila – the duties of the chief commercial officer.

“2009 was not an easy year for the aviation industry, and 2010 will also be a difficult one. airBaltic management’s work must be target-oriented and efficient, in order to continue the successful results we achieved over 2009 … airBaltic is planning to expand business and therefore the management structure needs to be simplified,” Flick said.

A new board of the company will be nominated by the shareholders’ meeting and elected by the airBaltic supervisory board.

The company has received a slew of bad press recently, with a fine from Latvia’s Competition Council and Bertolt Flick has been threatened a fine or possible jailtime by the country’s state revenue service over undisclosed tax information. Meanwhile the Latvian government recently approved a capital increase to help cover debt accrued by new purchases and losses occurred in 2008 — airBaltic finished last year with a negative capital at -25.27 million lats, and during the summer defaulted on a loan taken with SEB Bank.