On the rise: 3 executives to watch in 2023

Being a visionary in 2022 is to be flexible, determined and above all else, resilient. Air cargo executives encountered a slew of challenges this past year, whether it be high jet fuel rates and inflation, geopolitical conflicts and the closure of Russian airspace, manufacturing slowdowns and COVID-19 travel restrictions or labor shortages and backlogs at airport. Throughout it all, industry leaders remained agile and future-looking, as they will have to with the uncertain future that awaits in 2023. With help from our readers, Air Cargo World has selected three airfreight executives who we expect to continue to inspire, nurture and transform the industry landscape. Martin Drew – A green and growing future Martin Drew grew up minutes from London Heathrow Airport (LHR) with aviation and logistics in his blood — his mother, father, aunt and grandmother all holding roles at or related to LHR. “Everyone was involved in some way with the airport,” he said. Drew and Etihad’s future-focus in its sustainability initiatives, aggressive growth plans and work with the sheikdom of Abu Dhabi have earned him Air Cargo World’s recognition as an Executive to Watch for 2023. Despite its comparative youth in the industry, Etihad ranked No. 25 in most recent Air Cargo World evaluation of the top cargo carriers based on 2021 throughput. [caption id="attachment_57133119" align="alignright" width="273"] Martin Drew, senior vice president of global sales and cargo at Etihad[/caption] Drew’s first job was at Lufthansa Cargo as part of its development program, attending the carrier’s training college. He called it “a great place to start [his] career in cargo.” After Lufthansa, Drew joined a ground handling services company, then moved to Das Air in Dubai taking sales, commercial and operational responsibility for the Middle East and Asia. He joined Etihad in 2005 and, with the exception of a 15-month stint with Jet Airways in Mumbai, has been working at the company ever since. While his role spans passenger sales as well as cargo operations at Etihad, Drew says the cargo business has always fascinated him and he enjoys close relationships with clients. “Everybody knows everybody," he said. Drew took the helm of Etihad’s cargo operations in November 2020, eight months into the pandemic. “We had a responsibility to support the Abu Dhabi government in terms of their food-security program, but also ensuring that we’re putting as much capacity onto key trade lanes as well,” he said. Through the challenges presented by the pandemic, the carrier worked to “to provide our customers with as much capacity as we could in an environment where there was a massive shortage of capacity — that really helped strengthen those partnerships even more,” Drew said. An unshakeable force Chris Notter, former head of cargo handling at Etihad and now-consultant, has known Drew since he supervised him at his first job at Lufthansa. Through the pandemic, Drew was an unshakeable force, Notter said. “Martin never seemed fazed. He would never openly or professionally give the impression that he wasn’t able to overcome or to do something that would influence the outcome.” Etihad was involved in PPE, medical equipment and COVID-19 vaccine transport throughout the pandemic with a CEIV Pharma certification it attained in 2019. The airline also joined the Abu Dhabi Department of Health’s Hope Consortium in 2020, helping facilitate vaccine distribution globally and still making Abu Dhabi a logistics and life sciences hub. “It was an incredibly worthwhile initiative and something that continues today,” Drew shared. Turning a new leaf Looking toward a post-pandemic future, Etihad is in growth mode. The carrier opened a cool-chain facility in November at Abu Dhabi Airport (AUH) to double its capacity as Etihad’s pharmaceutical vertical grows — up 80% year over year that month, Drew noted. “One of the key reasons that Etihad was created was to really help promote Abu Dhabi as a destination, as a logistics hub around the world,” he said, a potential that also attracted him to the airline. In February, Etihad committed to seven new A350 freighters , part of its cargo and sustainability strategies, with innovative engineering for fuel efficiency. The carrier currently operates a fleet of five 777Fs, among the belly capacity provided by passenger operations. Abu Dhabi transferred ownership of the carrier to sovereign wealth fund ADQ in October. In April, Abu Dhabi Airports, Etihad Airport Services and Etihad Cargo partnered with Maqta Gateway to digitalize cargo transactions among the sheikdom’s five airports. A sustainable future Sustainability is a key initiative in Etihad’s brand and mission, and Drew said he believes it is “critically important.” “Sustainability has to be at the top of everybody’s agenda because it’s for our kids and our kids’ kids,” he added. “It’s so, so important that we as an industry really do everything we can to decarbonize.” Etihad is investing in sustainable aviation fuel, prioritizing its new sustainable aircraft and reducing usage of single-use plastic, with a goal to lose about 80% of single-use plastic onboard flights by the end of this year. “We really see ourselves as thought leaders in this space,” Drew added. Kirsten de Bruijn – Building from the ground up Kirsten de Bruijn, Westjet’s new executive vice president of cargo, has never been one to refuse a new opportunity. De Bruijn’s present challenge is building WestJet’s cargo arm and launching freighters from a historically passenger-only airline, making her one of Air Cargo World’s Executives to Watch for 2023. In the past year, WestJet has welcomed a new chief executive, chief digital officer and vic e president of procurement and supply chain , but it is the young, daring female executive at the cargo helm who promises a boom of Canada’s airfreight business. [caption id="attachment_57133093" align="alignleft" width="205"] Kirsten de Bruijn Executive Vice-President, WestJet Cargo[/caption] “I never planned my career to go this way, it always just happened that way,” de Bruijn told Air Cargo World . Paving the way De Bruijn, from a small town in the Netherlands, has always been curious, attentive to detail and organized, all attributes she’s leveraged for her career in logistics and aviation, she said. In 2007, she began working with Martinair in hotel procurement and quickly transitioned into operations procurement: negotiating ground-handling contracts for cargo and passenger operations. By age 27, de Bruijn was Martinair’s head of operations for the Americas and Caribbean for passenger and cargo, managing 22 cargo and passenger stations across the continents. “I didn’t even know what really a loadmaster was doing,” back then, she confessed. But she took the chance. Through the brambles In 2011, de Bruijn faced the challenge of closing down Martinair’s passenger operations. “I think that was one of the most difficult projects at a very young age,” she said of the layoffs and closures involved. Next, she moved to Singapore to head up Air France KLM Martinair’s (AFLKLMM) cargo operations in Asia, before moving back to AFKLMM’s headquarters to be head of pricing. De Bruijn then moved to Emirates to serve as vice president of pricing, followed most recently by her position as senior vice president for commercial and network planning at Qatar. When she got the call from WestJet and lessor-owner Onyx, she was ready for the next learning experience. “ Setting up a cargo airline , I think it’s been by far one of the most challenging assignments that I’ve had,” she shared. Calgary-based WestJet will start its freighter operations in March 2023 , finally moving its 737-800BCF freighters out of parking with the certification from Nav Canada and Boeing. The aircraft will fly between WestJet’s hub in Calgary (YYC) to Vancouver (YVR), Toronto (YYZ) and Halifax (YHZ) in addition to Miami (MIA) and Los Angeles (LAX). The carrier has already established a partnership with fellow Canadian GTA Group , an aviation services provider, offering both freighter and belly capacity. De Bruijn has an ambitious growth plan for the carrier’s fleet and is looking to have eight to 10 freighters operational within the next three years, she told Air Cargo World . With the first freighters at WestJet also comes new infrastructure , de Bruijn explained. “It is as much of a knowledge transfer from my years in being in cargo to a mindset change within the organization.” De Bruijn has leaned into her network of friends and colleagues from her 15 years in air cargo to kickstart WestJet’s freighter ops. “One of the most important leadership skills is that you need to hire people that know better than you,” she said. “Coming into bigger cargo airlines, they have the basis and the rule set up, you have a network planner that knows better than you, you have a crew scheduler that knows better than you, and I didn’t have any of that [at WestJet].” Boots on the ground Looking forward, de Bruijn sees growth opportunities domestically. Canada’s airfreight market has blossomed over the past two years . The freighter market has historically been dominated by Cargojet, but as the government invests in cargo infrastructure, so do its airlines. “Canada is special,” she said. “It’s so big … it has severe weather conditions; it needs air cargo, that’s for sure.” E-commerce demand has also pushed investment from outside carriers like Amazon Air . In fact, Canada is the ninth-largest global e-commerce market according to Cargo Facts Consulting . The customer base in Canada is also different, de Bruijn explained, as it doesn’t depend on the ex-China market or any others because the domestic business sector is so large. “There is so much to explore in this country of logistical needs that are required to really provide communities with everything that we have in a city like Calgary,” she said. “I think that’s really our objective for the future, and that’s why we are here for the long run.” Connie Kalitta – Ri sing from the ashes Conrad “Connie” Kalitta’s career is one built around speed. As a teenager in Mt. Clemens, Mich., Kalitta dreamed of drag racing and used to get caught reading hot rod magazines inside his textbooks and speeding on non-sanctioned stretches of highways. After graduating high school in 1957, Kalitta began to race professionally for Ford Motor Company — and had his first brush with logistics. [caption id="attachment_57133092" align="alignright" width="296"] Conrad "Connie" Kalitta, founder and chief executive of Kalitta Air[/caption] Kalitta, chief executive and founder of Kalitta Air, earned Air Cargo World’s Executive to Watch for 2023 due to his business’ monumental growth over the past two years, capitalizing on the need for air freight capacity in the United States and reliable people. The carrier has dramatically increased its freight tonne kilometers (FTKs) carried, flying 6.59 million tonnes in 2021, a massive 88% growth over the 3.5 million tonnes flown in 2018, according to Air Cargo World data . Kalitta had learned to fly a twin-engine Cessna 310 from a friend who owned the aircraft, and Ford’s traffic logistics division asked him to carry Ford auto parts on the way to his races, “which made it very simple,” he said. But it wasn’t a one-off flight; with his race earnings, Kalitta went on to buy his own Cessna 310 and made a business out of those trips, buying more aircraft and expanding his operations. “Once Ford got out of racing, I continued to move auto parts out of Willow Run Airport [YIP]” in Michigan, he said, where Kalitta Air is still operational. “I saw opportunities and expanded based on the industry’s needs.” Fanning the embers Kalitta’s airline, American International Airways (AIA), grew over the next few decades with a fleet of 49 aircraft, until 1997, when it merged with Kitty Hawk. That same year Kalitta founded aircraft brokerage company Kalitta Leasing, stepping away from AIA and its board of directors. “I like to build things, that’s my nature,” he said. In April 2000, Kitty Hawk filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and stopped operations, but Kalitta wasn’t going to let his airline go down without a fight. He purchased the airline’s operating certificate and assets, and resurrected its operations under the new name Kalitta Air, serving as chief executive since November 2000. These days, the cargo airline flexes a fleet of eight 777 freighters and 24 747-800 freighters. It retired its 767 operations in November and plans to add 10 more aircraft over the next four years. Kalitta also has looked to modernize its fleet as the launch operator of the 700-300ERSF . Shaking off the dust While Kalitta himself is not new to the cargo business by any means, Kalitta Air has found only success in its 22-year history. Kalitta Air also serviced the U.S. market during the pandemic, adding capacity back into the U.S.-China market in March 2020 and delivering vaccines in November 2020. Kalitta can’t point to a single career event as his proudest, other than watching his business grow. “We’re still doing it; we do it every day. We haven’t stopped as [the company] gets bigger and I’ve gotta respond to it,” he said. Part of Kalitta’s business genius has been designing and building it all himself. “I invented my own system — if anything that’s what I’ve done,” he said. “I’ve built a system with no debt and have everything done in-house,” whether that’s maintenance, repair and overhaul, flight crew training or a power plant repair center. The own-business model also lets Kalitta Air mitigate its costs, he added. A controlled burn The recipe for success also comes from his 1,000-strong team, Kalitta said. He personally works alongside team members and strives to create a family atmosphere. Looking to the future, Kalitta said that despite a volatile cargo market, Kalitta Air is healthy and positioned to take a downturn, if it comes. “We’re going to have trying times coming up here — we are starting to see it,” he said. “But with the introduction of more fuel-efficient aircraft [and] controlling our costs, we are positioning ourselves for resilience and future growth." Kalitta has watched his business rise from the ashes, and dreams for even bigger development in the next year. “I’m excited to see what I built continue to grow,” he said. “I have the team to make sure that happens.”

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