Air China Limited has named Dr. Zhihang Chi as Vice President and General Manager of North America with responsibility for all areas of Air China's operations in North America.

"With Dr. Chi's oversight appointment, Air China is making a strategic move to consolidate its North American operations in one office for Air China North America," said Lan Zhang, Senior Vice President, Commercial. Since starting service between North America and China in 1981, the airline's different gateways operated independently and reported directly to the head office in Beijing.

"Dr. Chi has led our Los Angeles office and our western U.S. regional office with tremendous success. With prior experience in the U.S. airline industry and his very unique bilingual and bi-cultural background, he has been able to apply best practices from both continents to our business here," said Zhang.

"As a result, Air China has achieved strong revenue growth in the Western U.S. Our station performance has turned around dramatically. Our brand awareness has been significantly enhanced. Today, a great team is in place," she said, "We're confident that Dr. Chi is the right person to take us to the next level in North America."

Before joining Air China in 2004, Dr. Chi was an executive at Northwest Airlines where he worked in a number of areas including marketing, information technology and alliances, where he developed and managed alliances with Chinese air carriers and vendors.

Dr. Chi studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a master's degree and a doctorate in Operations Research. He earned an undergraduate degree and a master's degree at Peking University in Beijing and was a Ford Foundation Economics Training Program scholar at the People's University of China.

Fluent in English and Chinese, Dr. Chi is a U.S. citizen and lives in Los Angeles.