JOHANNES HAIN
CEO OF REISER SIMULATION+TRAINING BY RICK WEATHERFORD
W
hen we ask Johannes Hain, CEO of Reiser Simulation+Training in Berg,
Germany, what he considers his greatest accomplishment, he fluently answers in English with his native Bavarian accent, “It’s not my personal accomplishment, but I’m still married after 34 years. I hope I’m right and my wife, Karin (a dedicated ICU nurse), doesn’t say we’ve been married 38 years!” The executive has been married, say approx. 34 years, has three grown children charting their own lives and careers, and he has a sense of humor.
FAMILY BUSINESS
With the emphasis Hain puts on family, it’s no accident that he answered the call when Reiser came calling in 2023 to offer him leadership of their growing flight simulation company. (At the time Hain was in Lucerne, Switzerland, serving as executive VP for Rosen Group.) Hain said, “Reiser is a family owned business and there’s also a family feel to the rotorcraft industry that I’ve experienced. Since I made the move to this industry, I’ve never looked back.”
Reiser is family owned, but it’s not stuck in its traditions. That’s one reason that founder Wolfgang Reiser’s family pursued Hain to come to their company. “Reiser approached me because they’ve been growing up from a very small company to a medium-size company,” said Hain. “They were looking for somebody who could industrialize, for lack of a better word, their traditional workshop approach. You cannot throw standard industrial processes over a
company like Reiser, but we’re marrying the old way with new technological processes to get the right balance.”
RIGHT NICHE
Hain and his team’s marriage of old and new appears to be working. In 2025, Reiser was ranked among the fastest-growing mid-sized companies in Germany, based on an analysis by Munich Strategy comparing 8,000 companies in the technology sector. Since its founding in 1988, the company has built on its passion for “realistic simulation and training solutions that protect people, the environment and resources, in aviation and beyond,” according to Reiser’s website. They engineer and manufacture products up to the highest EASA and FAA levels that include full flight simulators (FFS), flight training devices (FTD), mixed- reality (XR) simulation, aviation desktop trainers (ADT), and high-fidelity full-scale cockpits, plus they offer other flight training products and flight data software. They even manufacture a training console for trains, but all the company’s products and business revolve around the niche of training and simulation.
Being in a niche industry suits Hain; he’s worn that attire throughout his career. “I’ve always worked in companies that are very technologically oriented and all were niche, specialty businesses. At Reiser, the technology is fascinating and the rotorcraft world is itself a niche of the larger aerospace industry,” he said.
That career began after an impressive academic education earning degrees in business administration and mechanical engineering from Technische Universität Darmstadt (near Frankfurt, Germany) where he also worked as a scientific assistant, which in 1995 culminated in an earned doctorate in mechanical engineering.
TAKING HIS SCHOTT
Upon graduation, Hain began his career as an in-house consultant at Schott Group, which manufactures specialty glass and ceramics found in many products. He said, “It’s one of those hidden companies that nobody knows of, but their products are in many everyday things, such as pharmaceuticals, eyeglasses, cameras, etc.” In his 14 years there, he rose up from a consultant to the executive level, and this corporate climb not only took him up, but overseas to manage Schott’s divisions in North America from 1999 - 2003, where he eventually rose to become president of Schott Corporation USA. (At one time during these years in America, the Hain family resided in Vincennest, Indiana, where their youngest son was born; he is appropriately named Vincent.)
Hain returned to Schott in Germany where he served at the executive-level of the multinational. In 2006, he was named chairman of the board of Schott Lithotec AG, where his career with Schott culminated in 2009.
rotorpro.com 15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92
