Pierre-Hugues Schmit joined London Gatwick as Chief Executive on 1 September 2025.

Prior to joining London Gatwick, he was Chief Commercial and Operational Officer at VINCI Airports, a role he held since 2017. In this role, he oversaw operations across the entire VINCI Airports portfolio, which comprises 70 airports in 14 countries and serves over 300 million passengers, managing a wide range of activities from airport operations to air service development and cargo.

Pierre-Hugues also worked for the French Civil Aviation Authority for seven years, including three years as Head of the French Airlines Department from 2006 to 2009. Between 2010 and 2012, he served as an adviser to the French Transport Minister and later joined Aéroports de Paris as Deputy Director of the Le Bourget division. In 2014, alongside three partners, he co-founded La Compagnie, a French airline based in Paris and offering business class services to New York.

From 2019 until his appointment as CEO, Pierre-Hugues was a non-executive director on the London Gatwick Board, where he chaired the airport’s Operations Health and Safety Committee.

A graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (Paris) in 2001 and the French National University of Civil Aviation (ENAC in Toulouse) in 2003, Pierre-Hugues also spent one year at UC Berkeley as graduate student in transportation engineering.