Former LATAM Cargo executives Alvaro Carril and Pablo Canales have joined GSA Force as partners in the US-based general sales agency (GSA).
Joseph Czyzyk, GSA Force board chairman, said: “Having Alvaro and Pablo join GSA Force is a big win for our growing organisation. Their experience in Lan Chile [which became LATAM Cargo], Latin America’s largest airline holding company, provides significant benefits as we pursue our strategic plan to become the most significant air cargo sales force for the airline industry.”
GSA Force is a subsidiary of Mercury Air Group, a global aviation services company with 60 locations around the world providing aviation fuel, cargo and government contracting services.
Mercury Air Cargo is the largest third party cargo handler at Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco and San Jose airports, handling 22% of all international cargo at LAX.
Czyzyk added that GSA Force is “currently sourcing cargo on numerous international carriers and represents: Air China, Interjet and LATAM with more airlines currently in process”.
Carril began his career in air cargo in 1989 as sales director/Chile for Fast Air Carrier and then served as a vice president in Lan Chile’s cargo division. He was later promoted to Senior vice president of marketing and sales for the new Lan Cargo airline with overall responsibility for selling all cargo capacity on every passenger flight in the LATAM Airlines group, formerly LAN Airlines, network.
As a senior executive of LATAM, Carril was responsible for the introduction of Boeing 767 and B777 freighter services as well as developing new freighter routes to Europe and expansion of destinations into Brazil as well as the creation of Lan Cargo Colombia and Lan Courier.
Canales was an industrial engineer before joining Lan in 1994, where he was in operations and then became the cargo sales manager for Chile. Four years later, he was promoted to sales director for Chile, Perú, Oceanía and Ecuador with the goal of developing the Ecuadorian and Australian cargo markets for Lan Cargo. H
He is credited with the growth of Lan’s presence in Peru and introducing cargo operation into Miami. Canales also opened the European import market (Holland, Russia and Germany) to support Lan’s new B767-300 cargo operations, which included flowers out of Ecuador.
In 2008, he was promoted to Commercial Director for South American North Region and Central America, including Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panamá. Prior to joining GSA Force, Canales was the Director of Lan Cargo Colombia.