AVIATION P 26

Tom Kershaw appointed Chief Product & Technology Officer at Travelport

CSMIA records 60% increase in passenger footfalls after second wave of Covid-19

News Desk

Travelport has appointed Tom Kershaw as its new Chief Product and Technology Officer. Tom is a seasoned product and technology executive, with more than two decades of experience leading innovation, technical strategy and execution within both emerging and mature organizations undergoing transformation.

He most recently held the title of Chief Technology Officer at one of the largest independent advertising platforms in the world, Magnite, Inc. (which recently acquired SpotX, following the merger between Telaria and Rubicon Project in 2020). Tom is a graduate of New York University and London School of Economics, where he earned both a Diploma in Science and a Master of Arts degree in global and Latin American economics.

Speaking on his appointment, Greg Webb, Chief Executive Officer at Travelport, said: “As Travelport+ is the central focus of our strategy, we are continuing to invest heavily in our global technology and product resources to deliver more value to our customers with next-generation solutions. Tom is a proven change-maker, having led significant transformation in the enterprise Cloud space and global advertising sector, and I’m thrilled that he’s embraced the challenge of helping us modernize travel retailing. He brings invaluable knowledge and experience to our technology leadership team that will greatly support the evolution of Travelport+.” Tom Kershaw added: “Progression in any industry requires bold changes and I am greatly impressed with the direction Travelport is taking to facilitate simplified, modern retailing for the travel industry. I am excited to join Greg and the entire Travelport team at such a monumental time in the company’s transformation journey and look forward to accelerating innovation and delivering products that bring significant and meaningful value to its customers.”

In the role, Tom restructured and led an engineering and product team of approximately 600 developers, overseeing the integration of product and engineering into a common organization. While at Rubicon Project, in 2017, Tom also cofounded Prebid.org, an open-source software organization dedicated to cultivating a new standard for cooperation in independent advertising exchanges to address industry challenges by facilitating collaboration and innovation. He grew the organization to more than 100 corporate members, over 1,000 contributing engineers and thousands of web publishers, and lead prebid.js to become the dominant form of advertising monetization on the Internet.

News Desk

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) has registered an increase of approximately 60% in passenger traffic in June 2021 as compared to May 2021.

CSMIA has played host to a total of approximately 72,61,158 passengers over 77,797 flights across domestic and international destinations in the period between January to June 2021. During this time, the airport has catered to approximately 64,87,066 domestic passengers across 63,992 flights and over 7,74,092 international passengers across 13,805 ATMs. The airport registered Dubai emerging as the most popular international destination, having witnessed the highest traffic of over 2,13,770 passengers to and from CSMIA. This was followed by Newark with over 88,010 and Heathrow with 75,470 passengers respectively. Similarly, amongst the domestic destinations, Delhi saw the highest movements with over 9,46,890 passengers, followed by Goa with 5,42,350 and Bengaluru with 4,32,180 passengers respectively. CSMIA currently acts as a gateway to 54 domestic destinations and 21 international destinations for passengers from Mumbai. In the wake of the second wave of the pandemic in the country, the airport witnessed a growth of approximately 60% in passenger traffic during the month of June 2021 as compared to May 2021. CSMIA also saw addition of new routes destinations on domestic destinations like Dharbhanga, Adampur and Kalaburagi amongst others as well as international destinations like Batam, Armenia, Miami and Houston to name a few.

The world over has witnessed the outbreak of the pandemic, introduction of new variants and onset of secondary waves of the virus across borders since the year 2020. Through this time, the global aviation industry has been stoically continuing its efforts to ramp up the outlook for the industry from the impact of the pandemic.