Posada leaves Synergy
One of Latin America’s aviation leaders may be leaving the industry following his resignation from Synergy Aerospace.
With no fanfare, Posada has resigned as president of Synergy Aerospace, a division of Brazil’s Synergy group that owns Avianca, OceanAir, Wayra Peru, and Ecuador’s VIP. He has not said where he will go next.
Posada became the first president of Synergy Aerospace in March after German Efromovich, Synergy group president and majority owner, created that division and offered the position to Posada. Before that Posada had been president of Avianca.
Jose Efromovich, brother and partner of German Efromovich, succeeds Posada at Synergy Aerospace.
Neither Posada nor Efromovich has offered any explanation for Posada’s exit, but now that Avianca is several months out of US bankruptcy protection, a move fronted by Posada, it seemed a natural time for him to move on to another challenge.
According to local reports, Posada agreed to step down as Avianca’s president when the Synergy group took control of the airline last December. Fabio Villegas, head of Colombia’s national association of financial institutions and a former interior minister of Colombia, replaced Posada at Avianca.
Posada’s aviation career was spent steering airlines through turbulence. It started with his conversion of ACES, the airline of Colombia’s coffee growers, into a modern carrier. He largely succeeded, but Colombian aviation was still troubled, with rival Avianca a perennial loss-maker. ACES and Avianca agreed to integrate, and the owners of the much-larger Avianca picked Posada to head that effort. He became president of the Summa alliance. Soon after the collapse of ACES in 2003, Posada put Avianca through US Chapter 11. It successfully emerged last December, with 75% of its shares owned by the Synergy group.
Posada remains president of AITAL, the association of Latin American international airlines, until his term expires at the end of October.
David Knibb Seattle
Source: Airline Business
