EXECUTIVE WATCH Markus Schmitz


Managing Director of Axnes Inc. By Rick Weatherford


HeliExpo 2022 in Dallas on the Vertiport


“The helicopter industry is a comparatively small industry that almost has a family feel,” says Markus Schmitz. It’s a family that the managing director of Axnes Inc. has wanted to belong to much of his life. Upon graduating from the University of Applied Science at Aachen in his native Germany with an aerospace engineering degree, the 1998 graduate had to make a choice. One road led to designing fixed-wing airframes. The other road led to Eurocopter in Donauwörth where Schmitz was offered his way to helicopters. Schmitz took the wanderlust path. “I chose Eurocopter because I wanted to work in the helicopter industry and with its customers and see the world,” he says.


14 May/June 2022


Actually, that decision was pretty predetermined ever since Schmitz was a young boy growing up in the town of Vellmar, near the city of Kassel. His father sold fertilizer and salt internationally, and his mother was a homemaker for her family. “My background was a stable one from a small town,” he says. “My interests growing up were in medicine and aviation. Helicopters always fascinated me from seeing them fly overhead as a small boy, and I later understood their capabilities in medical emergencies.”


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