Milan Harnischfeger is a Data Scientist at the Lufthansa Group and is based in Swiss Airlines’ headquarters in Zurich. However, his position encompasses more than you would expect.
Milan started traveling and flying at a very early age. Due to his parents’ work, he grew up abroad in places like Cameroon, Nepal, Thailand, and Laos and “always had to fly all over the place. From a very young age, I always really liked flying.” After starting his university studies in aeronautical engineering, he realized that designing an aircraft was “a bit too technical for me” which led him to switch into Operations Research and Statistics and eventually revenue management (RM).
Milan started at Lufthansa Airlines in Munich as a business analyst, and later switched to a data scientist role for Swiss Airlines’ in Zurich where he currently focuses on defining processes and doing data science for revenue management. “It is a very fun role because most of our people do either (data science) or (define business processes) and what I really like about my position is that I get to do both.” His days are filled with troubleshooting current processes and projects, but also writing statistical models and AI models for new projects.
Milan views RM as the heart of the airline, i.e., the place where everything comes together and interfaces the most with other parts of the organization. For Milan, RM is a rewarding department to work in because “it’s very practical and when we touch something, it has an impact.” He explains that when they make a change to the RM system, they will probably see the impact the very next day – for better or for worse!
Milan likes working for an airline because in addition to the flight benefits, it has an appealing atmosphere. “Airlines tend to attract a diverse, modern, and young workforce that loves traveling” which are the types of colleagues that Milan likes working with.
For students with the desire to go into RM, he advises them not to underestimate the skillsets required to be a good RM analyst. He explains that “most people think it is easy to work in RM and a lot harder to be a good data scientist, but in reality, it is the other way around. Data scientists are everywhere, and RM is an extremely specific field.” He makes a parallel with the movie Armageddon: it is easier to teach an astronaut to drill than an oil driller to live in space.
Interested in learning more about Milan? Check out his LinkedIn page. But one fact you will not see about Milan online is that, as a good German, he loves to drive – and he can claim to have driven a car on every subcontinent of this planet!