2019 Airport Business Top 40 Under 40 Moe Khattak

Moe Khattak has always been fascinated by the aviation industry. “I did not know exactly what I wanted to major or specialize in during high school, but one thing I was sure on is that I wanted to pursue a career in aviation,” Khattak said.

Khattak is a business analytics and strategy manager at Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR). He works closely with the CEO, COO and rest of the airport’s leadership group and provides analytical work used in business decision making processes. Some of the projects he has delivered to the executive team involves assessment of risk analysis using complex simulations (Monte Carlo, Fisher models, etc), building revenue management models that play a vital role in negotiations with TNCs and constructing statistical models to forecast various variable impact on passenger growth and concession sales.

According to GRR COO Alex Peric, “Moe did not only produce professional consultants work in-house, but his leadership has been stellar in developing short and long-term data strategy and formed the data analytics unit from scratch.” All his efforts have helped further revenue advancements at the airport.

“I have direct access to the C-suite and I am involved in everything from ground transportation, concessions, passenger number crunching, to constructing real estate development financial models and present my findings to the leadership group at the airport,” Khattak said.

Khattak said, “airport executives in the U.S. need to develop enterprise wide policy and understand that data and analytics is the new frontier in finding innovative solutions to our business problems, become more effective and productive and maintain a competitive edge over other businesses,” Khattak said.

One of Khattak’s goals is to help smaller airports adopt data back approach in order to make them more efficient, increase their productivity and lead them to an increase in non-aeronautical revenue.