Taking flight: New airport CEO has lofty 5-year plan for excellence

Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport is the largest airport in the state of Alabama. It offers service from five carriers, has over 100 daily flights and served about 2.9 million passengers in 2018.

Ronald F. Mathieu, the airport’s new chief executive officer, said at the time of his hiring in May that Birmingham-Shuttlesworth is “a critical economic generator” for the region.

And Mathieu, who began work in Birmingham in mid-June and oversees all airport operations, has big hopes for the airport’s future.

“Five years from now, I want it to become common knowledge that Birmingham is the best small-hub airport in the nation — the best managed, the best financed, the best customer service — the whole nine yards,” he said. “We want people to compare themselves against us.”

Mathieu sat down recently with Iron City Ink to talk about some of the first steps he intends to take at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth in order to chase that lofty goal.

He discussed his passion for customer service, the information he is gathering from passengers about the airport’s performance, the steps that will be necessary to fill the hunger of area passengers for more direct flights from Birmingham to cities like New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco and the ways in which the airport can contribute to the local economy.

Formerly the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, Mathieu replaces Al Denson, who retired in January 2018 after 34 years with the Birmingham airport. After Denson retired, two people served as interim president and CEO before Mathieu’s hiring.

During his tenure in Little Rock, which began in 2006, Mathieu strengthened Clinton National’s financial position and made it debt free even while launching a large construction program, according to clintonairport.com.

Mathieu has also worked at such large airports as LaGuardia, Newark Liberty International and JFK International.

Chris Johnson, a Birmingham Airport Authority board member, praised what he called Mathieu’s “strong financial, operations and administrative work” at other airports.

“His extensive knowledge in airport operations and development will serve the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth airport well as we continue to see growing passenger traffic,” said Bobbie Knight, BAA board chairman.

One of Mathieu’s primary goals is to improve customer service. “I want people to have a good experience,” he said. “I want to have the best WiFi. I want for people to have the best comments about our restrooms, our facilities.”

To that end, Mathieu received approval from the board of directors in July to do a customer satisfaction survey, something the airport has never done. 

“I want to make that public,” Mathieu said. “It’s a baseline to where we are and what customers are thinking about us.”

At press time, Phoenix Marketing International had completed the survey for August 2019, and the data was to be shared at the Sept. 23 meeting of the board of directors of the Birmingham Airport Authority.

Customers in the Magic City are certainly thinking a lot about getting more direct flights from Birmingham-Shuttlesworth, according to Mathieu. “I’ve heard it loud and clear,” he said, laughing.

“I understand why people want more direct flights,” Mathieu said, noting that passengers on direct flights typically save about two hours.

But to attract direct flights to desired destination cities, the airport and its stakeholders must do their homework and show a carrier that there is sufficient demand in Birmingham to make it possible for them to offer that service from here.

And some of the new direct flights added from Birmingham “may be on a less-than-daily service,” Mathieu said.

For example, about 90 people in Birmingham per day are going or coming from Los Angeles, according to the airport. This refers to a key industry metric called PDEW, or passengers daily each way.

“If you were to get all those people, it wouldn't be enough to fill an airplane on a daily basis, but you could do it twice a week,” Mathieu said.

And to add such flights certain days of the week, the airport will likely turn to such ultra-low-cost carriers as Allegiant, JetBlue, Silver and Spirit, according to Mathieu.

This is due in part to dramatic consolidation in the airline industry over the last 15 years. “You had all these different carriers — Northwest, U.S. Air, America West — you could pitch to try to get a flight,” Mathieu said. “Today you are down to four majors.”

This means that airports in search of choices have to go to those ultra-low-cost carriers that “enter that market to provide that less than daily service, because that’s their business model,” he said.

To keep a flight in operation from an airport, airlines look at what they refer to as their “trigger point,” meaning that a flight is typically 75 or 80 percent full, Mathieu said. “So if you have a 100-seat airplane, they would be happy with maybe 80 seats a day filled.”

One key step toward improved service is the airport’s recent hiring of an air service development counselor from the Atlanta office of consulting firm Mead & Hunt. The firm can assist the airport in putting together a prospectus and identifying the airlines to approach regarding new flights.

The airport will also look at data from 2018 regarding the the top 50 destinations that people go to from Birmingham.

As part of this research process, Mathieu plans to start a Travel Advisory Group, or TAG, which will bring together local stakeholders to help determine the most viable, desired destinations for new, direct flights from the Magic City.

The members will include such constituents as travel agents, travel managers from local companies, state parks and tourism officials and representatives from the Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau, according to Mathieu.

“We’ll really talk about where their people are coming from, what are their destinations, what’s hot, what’s new, and we will sit down and really identify collectively what will work for us,” he said.

Airport officials will then bring in an airline to talk to the group, which will present the carrier with one or two specific destinations for new flights.

“The airline sees it, they see the commitment, they feel the love and you have a tendency of being a little more successful,” Mathieu said. “You have to do it as a group.”

At press time, work to form the TAG group was in progress, and Mead and Hunt was helping Mathieu in that effort.

The information from the new customer satisfaction survey — including data about gender, income and the numbers of business and leisure travelers —  can help Mathieu, at least indirectly, in his quest to get more direct flights for Birmingham.

“I want to have all of that and talk about who our passenger is and how we can expand from that and have more passengers, because as we have more passengers, then I have a greater story to tell in terms of the destinations that some people are looking for,” Mathieu said.

Birmingham-Shuttlesworth is an O&D, or origination and destination, airport, and the Federal Aviation Administration classifies it as a small hub, according to Mathieu. Hub in this context means that passengers “come from here and they go throughout the country, kind of like a hub and spoke,” he said. 

A small hub has anywhere from about 150,000 to 1.8 million enplanements, or departing passengers, annually, and Birmingham-Shuttlesworth, Mathieu said.

Birmingham is currently served by the four legacy carriers — Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines — and Frontier. 

And while Mathieu hopes to recruit some additional carriers, including Allegiant and Spirit, “it's not so much the number of airlines as the destinations,” he said, referring to the use of connecting flights.

He believes that a passenger can get to any destination from Birmingham with only one stop at a connecting hub, such as Chicago, Charlotte, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore or Houston. “Sometimes people think if you do not have a direct flight then you can’t get there, but that isn’t true,” Mathieu said.

And airports, including Birmingham-Shuttlesworth, have another, larger purpose, according to Mathieu. “The number one thing airports do is serve as an economic engine,” he said. “The flights are a means to an end.”

For example, Mathieu noted that the airport had recently gotten about $10 million in FAA grants, including $8 million for a new Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting, or ARFF, station and $2 million for new firetrucks. 

“What do you think is more important in the community: getting another flight or getting four more projects that put people to work?” he said. “We need to be really good at both.”

Another way the airport could have a positive economic impact on the area is through the exploitation of the Opportunity Zones located near the airport, including 400 acres set aside for advanced manufacturing and maintenance operations.

An Opportunity Zone is an economically-distressed community where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment, according to irs.gov.

“We’d love to bring an entity out here in the Opportunity Zones and have more jobs, provide opportunities, build a product here,” Mathieu said.

He noted that jet manufacturer Dassault Falcon opened a finishing center — their only such facility in the United States — in Little Rock near the Clinton Airport.

However, to draw a business, “the land itself is not enough,” Mathieu said.

The site “has to be attractive,” he said. “We may need to build access roadways. We may need to build a (freeway) spur.”

And this will require “the team of the city, the state and the county — and the airport, of course — working together,” Mathieu said.

Mathieu earned a bachelor’s degree in aviation management from the Florida Institute of Technology. He is a private pilot, a certified member of the American Association of Airport Executives and a board member of the International Association of Airport Executives. Mathieu and his wife, Yasmine, have two children.

Mathieu was asked to give a snapshot of the overall status of the airport as he begins his tenure, in terms of its facilities, its personnel and the quality of its user experience.

 “I think we’re in a good location, but here’s my philosophy: pursue perfection so you can achieve excellence,” he said. “There should never be a destination called success. There is only a journey called success. ... because there’s always more you can do for your passengers.”