Klaus J. Lauth, Founder, CanAm Airways
Klaus J. Lauth was born in Indonesia in 1961 and raised between cultures, continents and technical worlds. A German mechanical engineer and management consultant, he has spent much of his professional life at the intersection of industrial infrastructure, aviation-related engineering, energy systems, automation, data centers, logistics and strategic project development.
His connection to aviation did not begin with an airline concept. It began on the workshop floor.
 | In 1988 and 1989, during his engineering studies, he worked at Liebherr Aerotechnik in Lindenberg, one of the key Airbus systems suppliers. There, he was involved in the assembly and 100 percent testing of Airbus components, including flap/slat system components, gearboxes, position-pick-off units, wing-tip brakes, power-control units and air-conditioning packs. Around 2001, he carried out planning and development work for Impulse Aircraft, including a lightweight retractable landing gear concept based on a single electrically driven spindle actuator, as well as an AeroDiesel concept for the Impulse 100, using a Subaru diesel engine with a redundant toothed-belt PSRU unit. At the time, certified aircraft diesel propulsion was still at a very early stage, and the concept was intended to move ahead of the market. The concepts were not abandoned for technical reasons. Rather, due to limited investment and commercial constraints, they did not materialize in the later aircraft configuration. In hindsight, they anticipated themes that would become increasingly relevant in aviation: mechanical simplification, operational reliability, lightweight systems, propulsion integration and the search for practical engineering answers beyond conventional thinking. |
It was an early and formative exposure to the aircraft world in which precision, documentation, redundancy, repeatability and quality discipline are not abstract ideals, but operational necessities. Aviation, in that environment, was not romance. It was tolerance chains, test procedures, traceability and responsibility.
His wider industrial background later added scale to that technical foundation.
He worked on major industrial and infrastructure projects, including the fully automated Mercedes-Benz / SMART paint facility in Hambach, France, and the Injazat Data Systems Data Center in Abu Dhabi, where he served as Chief Coordination Engineer in a Tier-IV-oriented development and commissioning environment. Projects of this kind required the coordination of power, cooling, fire protection, control systems, data interfaces, all contractors, documentation and operational logic under intense technical and commercial pressure.
Further aviation- and airport-related assignments followed in Abu Dhabi. In the STRATA / IPAC environment, he supervised Airbus-related component handling, packaging and shipment logistics. In an early phase of the Abu Dhabi Airport Midfield Terminal Complex, he contributed through SCADIA to the strategic and technical framing of airport infrastructure.
During his years in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Mr. Lauth also developed and personally propagated strategic aviation considerations with senior Etihad management concerning Abu Dhabi’s access to the German and European carrier market. These considerations included traffic rights, airport access and, in particular, Berlin-related slots, at a time when differentiated access to Germany was of strategic value for the Abu Dhabi Airline in its competition with Emirates.
That strategic context later became publicly visible through Etihad’s investment in Air Berlin. For Mr. Lauth, it reinforced a central lesson: in aviation, aircraft are only one part of the equation. Market access, airport position, regulatory structure, route rights, slots and political timing can be just as decisive as the aircraft itself.
Building on this combination of engineering, aviation systems exposure and complex infrastructure, Mr. Lauth later worked in the management consulting environment, amongst others for Management Engineers in Düsseldorf, a German strategy and operations consulting firm later integrated into PwC’s Strategy&. His consulting assignments included industrial and automotive clients such as BMW, Volkswagen / Škoda, Webasto, Würth and other major corporate clients.
Over time, a pattern emerged.
Technical systems taught him to respect limitations. Infrastructure projects taught him to think in interfaces. Consulting taught him to test assumptions. Aviation taught him that scale, access and timing decide whether an idea remains interesting or becomes operational.
CanAm Airways was developed from precisely this perspective: It is not conceived as a conventional airline start-up built around a fashionable aircraft type or a single route idea. It is an engineered aviation platform, based on aircraft asset logic, route discipline, premium long-haul economics, cargo interfaces, airport integration, infrastructure requirements and realistic market boundaries.
The CanAm concept connects North America, the Canary Islands and selected African markets through a new Atlantic logic: using the Canary Islands not as a leisure destination alone, but as a strategic aviation bridge between continents.
For Klaus J. Lauth, CanAm Airways is therefore not a sudden departure from his previous work. It is the result of it.
A project shaped by engineering discipline, infrastructure thinking, aviation experience, strategic consulting and the conviction that overlooked geographies can become powerful aviation platforms when aircraft, market, airport and timing are brought into alignment.