Nigerian airline startup, Green Africa Airways said it has appointed Joshua Koshy as its Founding Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
The airline said in a statement that Joshua is an elite industry veteran with over 30 years of distinguished experience.
Joshua most recently served as the Group CFO at Qatar Airways and Qatar Aviation Leasing Company. In this role, Joshua arranged financing and lease transactions. He also managed the Group’s cumulative hedge book and negotiated very large aircraft capex orders. Before being appointed as Group CFO, Joshua served as the Group EVP of Finance & IT.
Prior to Qatar Airways, Joshua served as EVP & CFO of Air Canada with overall responsibility for Finance, Procurement and Properties of an airline just emerging from Canadian Bankruptcy Protection. He negotiated aircraft orders, commenced jet fuel hedging, managed investor relationships and played a key role in taking Air Canada back to the public markets.
Joshua spent most of his early career at Emirates where he served in different roles of increasing level of responsibilities. At Emirates, he started as the GM of Financial Systems with a key mandate to establish strong internal controls for the then parent company of Emirates (dnata). He designed and implemented the first Authorities Manual for the Emirates Group. He also designed, constructed and implemented the globally recognized Passenger & Cargo Revenue Accounting Application called RAPID for in-house use. RAPID is currently being used by more than 50 airlines globally. Thereafter, Joshua was promoted to SVP of Finance with primary responsibility for Management Accounting, Budgeting & Financial Accounting for the entire Emirates Group. Joshua retired from Emirates as the SVP of IT with overall responsibility for IT of the entire group.
With Joshua taking on the CFO leadership role, Alejandro Tres who has been serving as our Interim CFO will become Director of Finance and Head of Treasury reporting directly to Joshua. Alejandro has 12+ years of finance experience across multiple industries. Prior to joining Green Africa Airways, Alejandro most recently served as the CFO of Flybondi, Argentina’s first value airline. In this role, he was responsible for accounting, treasury, controlling, purchase, legal and fleet administration of the new airline. Alejandro was responsible for successfully negotiating the launch fleet which were on operating leases.
“We are very delighted that Joshua has accepted to join us on this journey to build Green Africa Airways into a world class value carrier that will create a better future for several millions of customers in the region. As always, we will continue to keep you posted as the journey evolves,” the statement said.
It would be recalled that Boeing announced last December that Green Africa Airways made a commitment to order about 100 aircraft for its operations in Africa’s largest economy.
