Siegfried Knecht

Siegfried Knecht (64), VP Director R&T Affairs in the Airbus Public Affairs Germany Department, has over 15 years of experience in the aerospace industry and over 25 years of political lobbying expertise.

After graduating from the Technical University Aachen with a diploma degree in Computer Science he began his career in 1987 at the Research Center Jülich where he was appointed Assistant Director in 1991. From 1994 to 1997 he was with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Bonn, finally as PA to the Parliamentary State Secretary.

In 1998 Siegfried joined the German Association of Research-based Pharma­ceutical Companies as Head of its Berlin office and became Head of Inter­national and Regional Affairs in 2000. He stayed in this position until 2006 when he changed to EADS (today Airbus) as Senior Manager Political Affairs.

In September 2013 he was appointed as VP Head of Political and External Affairs for Airbus (commercial airplanes) in Germany. He held responsibility for all political matters related to Germany with a particular focus on German and foreign government officials, parliamentarians, business associations and think tanks.

Following an 18 months interim stage in the Airbus Corporate Technical Office, he joined in July 2017 the Airbus Public Affairs Germany team as VP Director R&T Affairs and resumed his functional reporting to the Airbus CTO.

In June 2011 Siegfried accepted the honorary appointment as Chairman of the Board of aireg, the Aviation Initiative for Renewable Energy in Germany.