Maria Cardenal, previously head of innovation at Spanish carrier Vueling Airlines, has joined Immfly, a provider of in-flight digital services and entertainment in Europe and the Middle East, to lead the company’s product and innovation department, applying her talents to creating personalized capabilities that passengers can access through their own smart electronic devices.
Cardenal is no stranger to technology, having set up the Vueling Innovation Lab and participated in the IAG’s startup acceleration program Hangar 51. She also served as head of product development and ancillary revenues at Vueling for nine years, and, was accountable for the ancillary revenue generated by those products and services.
Prior to that, Cardenal was part of the management team that started the Clickair airline in Europe, as head of ancillary revenue from 2007 to July 2009 when it merged with Vueling. Before joining the airline industry, she spent seven years helping enterprises to enter e-commerce, as head of new business development at Logista, from 2000 to 2007.
Jimmy Martinez Von Korff and Pablo Linz, co-founders of Immfly, said of the appointment: “María Cardenal brings a unique airline DNA to our company. We have known each other for a long time and we share the same vision on where we want to expand our cabin digital services. Maria was has been driving innovation and ancillary in Vueling in the key years of the airline’s digitalization. We are excited about her user-centric approach and we are sure we will continue building extraordinary technologies and services for the cabin space that will meet airlines digital aspirations.”
