Leader of the Pack: Tom Werner, Executive Director of Duluth International Airport   

Tom Sega has a Zoom sit-down conversation with Tom Werner, Executive Director of the Duluth International Airport, on this week’s episode of Leader of the Pack, a podcast by Duluth Pack. Northland native Tom Werner shares his story about growing up in the greater Duluth area and working his way up to be the Executive Director of the Duluth Airport. In addition, Tom Werner goes in-depth about the standard operations of an airport and what kind of staffing and labor goes into running an airport effectively.    

Tom Werner’s Background   

Tom starts by taking us through his backstory. He mentions that he was born in North Carolina into a military family, and shortly after he was born, his family moved back to the Northland area and resided in rural Rice Lake, which is just north of the Duluth area. In 1992, he graduated from Duluth Central High School with little idea of what he wanted to do for a career, so he decided to enlist into the Army Reserves, where he served for 20 years and experienced tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, Mr. Werner also worked on multiple road construction projects in the Duluth area in between deployments. Tom shares the prior experiences that propelled him into his current position as the Duluth International Airport’s Executive Director. He starts by detailing his time as a road construction employer, making a note of how seasonal road construction is in a place like Duluth, so in order to put consistent food on the table throughout the whole year, Tom decided to take a job at the airport plowing runways in the wintertime when road construction jobs were not an option. He then was promoted as a full-time, year-round airport employee as a part of their airfield maintenance and operations team that takes care of all of the surfaces within the airfield fence—everything from airfield lighting and clearing runways to managing vegetation around the fences and barriers.    

Day In The Life of the Airport Executive Director   

Tom Sega asks, “What is a day in the life of an airport Executive Director like?” Tom Werner replied, “Each day heavily varies depending on where I am needed and what is required of me.” He mentions that a key part of his routine is getting into work as early as possible to complete as many tasks before 8 AM, due to the airport’s very fast-paced and busy office environment. Tom states that his most important duty is to be available and responsive when his co-workers attempt to contact him, even when he is out of town. He also states that a prominent role with his title is to provide leadership and counsel to his team as needed throughout a typical workday and assist the airport’s effort to promote and market aviation. Tom says, “If you had to boil down the Executive Director position, my role is to be an advocate for aviation and an ambassador for the community and the airport.”   

Terminal Expansion Project  

The conversation shifts seamlessly to talking about large expansion projects that the airport committee has undertaken in recent years. Tom Werner recalls the year 2009 when the terminal expansion project had begun, mentioning that he was actually in Afghanistan when the project was being planned out. He goes on to mention that his involvement in the project was limited to the year 2012 when he came back to the airport as Director of Operations. He remembers needing to be ‘spun up’ on the project very quickly in order to learn the ins and outs of such a large task that had already been underway for a number of years at this point. Tom proudly mentions that the project was completed in 2012 after a number of long days on site administering the construction project while also needing to keep the airport open and operating as usual.   

Daily Airport Operations   

Tom Werner talks about a typical day when the airport sees several hundred people come through the doors and get onto flights. He also mentioned that the yearly total of passengers is usually around 300,000, which fluctuates for several reasons such as the economy, weather, etcetera. Tom says, “The backbone of our airport’s passengers are business travelers who are looking to get to their destination as quickly as possible. We can assist them by flying directly to large hubs such as Minneapolis and Chicago O’Hare, which essentially connects them to any destination in the world.” In addition, he mentions that they are making an effort to grow their leisure passenger traffic. Mr. Werner says that he realizes many people drive down to the Minneapolis / St. Paul airport to take off for their vacations instead of flying out of the Duluth Airport, which is one thing that he is working to improve. Tom then talks about the steps he has taken to improve in this area, such as bringing in Sun Country Airlines to fly customers directly to Fort Myers, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, Tom goes into more detail about the process behind bringing a new airliner to the Duluth Airport. He describes the process as being multiple years of working to build relationships and connections with airline companies and decision-makers, attempting to sell them on the idea of creating revenue by bringing planes up to Duluth. Tom says he does this by using numbers and data to show the decision-makers that make it clear to them that it is advantageous and, more importantly, profitable for airlines such as Sun Country to bring planes up to Duluth.   

COVID Impacts on the Airport   

Tom talks about his initial reactions to hearing the news of COVID in March of 2020, and he recalls using his military training in the sense of emergency procedures operations. Tom phrases, “My first thought was to make sure that my workers are safe and able to cope with the situation.” Tom states that he and his team were preparing for the long haul in the spring of 2020 because they had no idea how long this would last, just like the rest of the world. Tom states that in April 2020, the Duluth Airport only had 700 passengers for the whole month when usually the airport sees around 700 passengers every two days. Tom says that one of his main objectives for this time was ensuring that the airport did not lay off a single employee, which is a promise he kept. Tom was able to keep every single one of his workers on staff throughout the pandemic, and they all remain on staff to this day.    

This was a remarkable conversation with an outstanding leader who has constantly persevered and adapted to evolving situations to put the airport and his team in a position to grow and be prosperous during a pandemic. It is quite an accomplishment to keep your entire staff through a difficult time with so much uncertainty revolving around the aviation industry in particular. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Tom. It was a pleasure to hear about your successes and experiences and more information about the continued success of the Duluth International Airport.