Airport to hire in-house recruiter for service
Airport board chairman Jack Sammons said Tuesday that Delta Air Lines doesn’t foresee “more Draconian cuts” at Memphis, but he cautioned the situation “could get worse before it gets better.”
Sammons said airport officials met last week with Delta chief executive officer Richard Anderson.
“He indicated there are probably not going to be any more Draconian cuts, but it’s a dynamic industry,” Sammons said.
Delta is down to fewer than 100 daily flights on weekdays and fewer than 20 a day on weekends.
Speaking to the Memphis Rotary Club, Sammons said the Memphis airport will hire a fulltime recruiter for new air service and a public information chief in hopes of stemming a tide of public disapproval over service cuts and high fares.
Sammons said for-hire consultants aren’t enough, especially when they may also work to bring new air service to cities with which Memphis is in competition.
“The same consultant that we hire, that we pay a lot of money to, may well work for Little Rock and Nashville,” Sammons said. “I’m convinced this is not enough and plan to hire a permanent air service officer in-house, who wakes up every morning thinking about, ‘How am I going to get more airplanes coming into Memphis at affordable fares?’ and going to bed at night doing the same thing.”
Both the airport authority and the Mid-South Regional Air Service Task Force are paying avia- tion consultants to help attract new air service and lower fares.
Sammons said the airport administration also will install a high-level information officer to respond to public requests and make sure the airport’s story is told, warts and all.
“One area we don’t do well in, we’ve done a poor job in, is communication. In the next few days, we’re going to post to hire a strategic public information officer to help us in that regard. Citizens of
this community have an expectation and a right to hear all of the news, good and bad. We can’t just give the Chamber of Commerce pitch.”
Sammons succeeded former longtime board chairman Arnold Perl in January.
He told Rotarians he’s channeling his embarrass- ment about the airport’s sagging fortunes into an all- out push to make it the Mid-South’s airport of choice. He recalled arriving in Memphis at 5 p.m. on a recent Sunday, and his Delta DC-9 was the only commercial passenger airplane in sight.
“The comments from the passengers looking out the window burned an impression in me,” Sammons said. “It was like they had gone to the zoo and all the animals were gone. It really just got all over me. I’m a competitive guy. I don’t care whose fault it was or how it happened.
“The reality is, it embarrassed me, and here I am, chairman of the airport authority, and we’re rolling up to our fancy airport and have got the only plane coming in,” he said. “That got my attention. Forget the embarrassment. It energized me. We’ve got to find a new path.”