Source: Fly Nigeria.
Green Africa Airways recently announced that it has appointed Nathan Smith, Lara Yusuff, Kristof Hegedus and Jasmine Dhillon as Directors of Maintenance & Engineering, Quality & Safety, Ground Operations and Cabin Services, respectively.
As detailed by the airline startup, “Nathan Smith is a seasoned industry leader with almost 40 years of aviation experience. He most recently established Maintenance, Engineering and the Continuous Airworthiness Maintenance Organization (CAMO) program at flyadeal airlines, the low-cost subsidiary of Saudi Arabian Airlines.
Flyadeal received its AOC in less than 12 months and commenced flight operations in late 2017. Prior to flyadeal, Nathan served as SVP of Maintenance & Engineering at SpiceJet Airlines in India.
As a Nominated Postholder at SpiceJet, he had overall responsibility for the technical function and establishment of safety and airworthiness standards for the airline fleet under the guidance and directions of the Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA) India.
Nathan spent 27 years at American Airlines before embarking on the international phase of his career. At American, he held various positions within aircraft maintenance and engineering. In his last years at American Airlines, he had overall maintenance & engineering responsibilities for American Airlines’ West Coast Operations.
Lara Yusuff currently serves as Regulatory Support Manager (Directorate of Safety, Compliance & AOC) at TUI Airways UK & I. She has responsibility for ensuring that TUI Aviation’s regulatory requirements are met and standards upheld across its AOCs, design, maintenance and training organizations within Europe.
Prior to joining TUI Aviation, Lara worked at British Airways (Directorate of Engineering) where she served as a Quality Engineer, Approvals & Authorizations Manager and Project Implementation Manager.
She also served as Senior Quality Engineer and Deputy Chief of Airworthiness at MGR Foamtex, a leading manufacturer of advanced passenger upholstery systems for premium cabin seating. During the much earlier days of her career, Lara served as an Aviation Safety Inspector at the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA).
Kristof Hegedus most recently served as the Director of Ground Operations (and nominated postholder) at Primera Air where he had overall management responsibilities for the Ground Operations, Security and Operations Control Center (OCC) departments.
Prior to Primera, Kristof was the Compliance Manager for Ground Operations at Wizz Air. In this role, he led ground handling and airport operations for Wizz Air in Italy, Lithuania and Latvia. He was also responsible for designing and managing compliance monitoring audits, maintaining all Ground Operations Manuals, setting up stations, and training handling agents.
Before joining Wizz Air, Kristof was Head of Operations at Goldair Handling Bulgaria, and prior to that, he spent six years at easyJet in various roles including Crew Control Officer and Airport Operations Officer.
Jasmine Dhillon, an industry veteran with over 24 years of experience, most recently led the Cabin Crew Department at Air Asia India. In this role, Jasmine had responsibilities for hiring and training cabin crew, cabin crew operations and maintaining a customer-focused environment across the company while keeping a close eye on revenue generation and cost efficiency.
Prior to Air Asia, Jasmine was Deputy General Manager of Inflight Services at SpiceJet. At SpiceJet, she oversaw the airline’s inflight department across India and had responsibility for a team of 20+ managers and nearly 900 crew members.
Before joining SpiceJet, Jasmine served as Assistant Base Manager at Kingfisher Airlines. Jasmine’s earlier experiences include serving as a flight attendant with Tower Air, ModiLuft and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.”
“We are incredibly delighted to welcome Nathan, Lara, Kristof and Jasmine to the Founding team. They are a group of talented industry leaders with a shared vision to build Green Africa Airways into a world-class carrier that will help create a better future for several millions of customers in Nigeria and Africa at large.
Not only that, they are committed to tapping into their top-notch base of knowledge and industry relationships to help train the next generation of leaders in the Nigerian commercial aviation industry,” said Green Africa Airways.
