‘I give the joystick to someone more competent’, says Kakinoff, who left Gol after 10 years

The president of Gol Linhas Aéreas, Paulo Kakinoff, who commanded the company for the last ten years, is leaving. On July 1, the current executive director of operations (COO), Celso Ferrer, assumes command of the airline.

Kakinoff will join Gol’s board of directors. “It’s a pleasure to end a cycle handing over the yoke to an executive that you know is much more competent than you, as is the case with Celso,” Kakinoff told Sheet.

“He has been with Gol for 17 years, we have worked side by side for the last seven years. This is the conclusion of the transition process that was designed three years ago”, he said.

According to Kakinoff, Gol was dedicated to fulfilling one of the most delicate stages of corporate governance, which is the change of command, with preparation, development and implementation of the succession.

“I am very happy and very proud of this trajectory”, says the executive, 47, who made a career in the automobile industry before arriving at Gol. He worked for 16 years at the Volkswagen group, which he left in 2012 as president of Audi in Brazil.

Kakinoff held Gol’s “stick” at the most delicate moment in the world’s airline industry. During the pandemic, there were mass layoffs in several airlines, including in Brazil. Gol’s option was to keep all the employees.

In an interview with Sheet at the beginning of the year, Kakinoff said that one of the hardest moments of 2021 was to reduce the air network in the second wave of Covid, after everyone believed that the worst was over and that the return would be gradual.

“This required a very important level of sacrifice from the entire team, which went through everything very united. We adopted a motto: ‘No one disembarks,'” Kakinoff said at the time.

None of the 14,000 people on the team were laid off. For this, it was necessary to reduce everyone’s salaries by up to 50%, and those of the board, by up to 70%, until December 2021.

In a note, Constantino Júnior, president of Gol’s board of directors, stated that he has been closely monitoring the transition and that Kakinoff “will continue to bring his enormous know-how, now as a counselor.”

On the 11th, the company announced the creation of a holding company with the Colombian Avianca, the Abra group, which will control four low-cost airlines in Latin America: Gol, Avianca, Viva (Colombia) and Sky (Chile).

New president joined Gol as an intern

The new president of Gol, Celso Guimarães Ferrer Junior, 39, joined the company 17 years ago as an intern.

Since 2019, he has been COO of Gol, responsible for the areas of operations, operational security, airports, planning, mesh, supplies and fleet.

Prior to that, he was vice president of planning for five years, where he gained experience in pricing and alliances.

Graduated in Economics from USP (University of São Paulo) and in International Relations from PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo), Ferrer has an Executive MBA from French Insead.

“He is also an experienced airline pilot and is part of Gol’s crew in the Boeing 737 fleet,” the airline said in a statement.

“Celso Ferrer has in his flight plan the mission of leading Gol’s more than 14,000 employees in the execution of the company’s strategic plan, with a special focus on digital development journeys, acceleration of the fleet renewal process, new services to customers , sustainability and expansion of the mesh”, says the text.