Anko van der Werff, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), has informed the airline’s board that he will step down from his current role in early 2027 to become the new CEO of Air Canada.
The Dutch executive, who previously held senior executive positions at Avianca, Aeroméxico, Qatar Airways and KLM, took up the top executive role at SAS in 2021, at a time in which the Scandinavian carrier was facing numerous financial and strategic challenges.
Van der Werff’s tenure at the head of SAS has been deeply transformative for the airline.
Over the past five years, he has steered the Scandinavian carrier through a major restructuring, including a change in its capital structure, with Air France-KLM and investment firm Castlelake becoming major shareholders, and SAS switching from Star Alliance, of which it was a founding member, to SkyTeam. On the product side, he also reintroduced the European business class and laid out the groundwork for SAS’ future fleet.
The announcement comes just days after SAS announced, at a media event in Copenhagen attended by AeroTime, the largest aircraft order in its history: up to 40 widebody jets of the A330 family. Just one year earlier, in July 2025, Van der Werff also signed a deal with Embraer to procure up to 55 E195-E2 jets.
At Air Canada, Van der Werff will replace Michael Rousseau, who is expected to retire on August 31, 2026, after nearly two decades with the company.
Air Canada confirmed that Rousseau will remain available to the new CEO to assist with the transition, while an Executive Committee reporting to the Board of Directors will take on the executive functions at the airline until Van der Werff’s arrival.
Rousseau came under fire in March 2026 after expressing condolences for the Air Canada Jazz flight that crashed at LaGuardia Airport (LGA) only in English, in an apparent breach of Canada’s bilingualism policy.
Official confirmation of the leadership change came up just days after Bloomberg reported that Anko van der Werff was the leading candidate to replace Rousseau at the Canadian flag carrier.