[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side".

My guest today became enamored with aviation when he was only five years old and sat in the cockpit of a fighter jet his older brother flew.

He now has made aviation his business, and his passion, too.

Today, he helps direct the expansion of what has been called the new downtown of the Piedmont Triad.

Today we meet Kevin Baker, the executive director of the Piedmont Triad International Airport.

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[upbeat music] [bright music] - Kevin, welcome to "Side by Side".

How does PTI compete in a state when you have two other major airports in both the Triangle and Charlotte-Mecklenburg?

You gotta have a tough job, my friend.

- Yeah, Nido, first of all, thank you for having me on today, and I would actually, you know, say that the folks in our region have the option of going to any of those three airports.

We recognize that.

And it's not something that we could fight against and not something we're going to fight against, but instead, we've looked at where our strengths are with respect to those three airports, if you will.

Certainly, the fly easy piece, and I don't think that there's anybody that would argue the fact that it's more simple to fly out of our airport by far than either of the other two.

- Less traffic, less traffic jams.

Accessible from different places.

- Easier parking.

Easier TSA experience.

Easier to get a drink in the terminal.

Easier to find your gate.

Just easier overall, you know?

And then on the other side, we've developed a two-pronged mission, when one is that passenger experience, and to make sure that it is always an exemplary experience for the passenger.

But also, we have focused, in a laser-like fashion, on the economic development side of the airport.

And the airport is, I think, unique in the country with respect to the assets that it has to support that kind of growth going forward, and to bring really good paying jobs to this region.

- Kevin, you're building all the time.

And what fascinates me is, how did you get all that land, to have this arsenal of inventory to allow you to compete in this way?

- Yeah, you know, Nido, I've been saying an awful lot, especially in recent years with some of these big wins that we've had, is that we're standing on the shoulders of giants but for the decisions made by staff and board members 10, 20, 50 years ago to acquire land and to develop that land, to assemble it so that you have large sites ready to go, to bring utilities to it, all of those kinds of things are now bearing fruit.

And this is a long view business.

You can't say that you wanna have success in two years whenever you're looking at building a site that might be 200 acres in size and you need to move mountains to get it there, and you need to move utilities to it.

These things take time.

- And reroute roads and highways around it.

- Yes, exactly.

You know, I mean, we've had interstates moved and bridges built over interstates, and it takes a long time, and, you know, honestly, when I started in this role, I saw what those folks for those last decades had put together and assembled and created an opportunity.

That's why I took the job.

- Yeah, yeah.

Educate me how an airport works.

Let's begin with the simplest question.

Where do you get your revenue from?

- Yeah, so, number one, no taxes, okay?

So we are not supported by anybody's taxes.

The revenue to the airport comes- - But you get FFA- - FAA grants, yes.

- Grants.

- And those are a ticket tax.

So, I would describe it more as just like when you pay your utility bill, it's a user fee, right?

You're paying that utility the amount of money that it costs for them to operate that utility and provide you that service.

Same thing on a ticket that you're paying, where a little bit of that goes to the FAA, for them to then provide that to airports to be able to do things like repair runways, taxiways, put lights on them.

I mean, these are things that don't get paid for by themselves, and they're very expensive.

- Sure, very expensive.

- So, you know, you do have that source, but there's no taxes from, you know, your property taxes, that kind of thing- - Yes, I understand.

- That are coming to the airport, no local taxes.

And then, you know, our revenue at the airport is basically about one third consumer services, so that's people parking, buying, you know, we get a little piece of, if they buy a drink or a newspaper or whatever at the concession stands.

Renting cars.

So, that's the consumer generator revenue.

- Advertising?

- Advertising, yeah, exactly, advertising is a big piece of it.

And then you also have the airline revenue, so the airlines pay us a landing fee for the aircraft to land.

They pay us rent for the ramp space where they park, and also for the terminal space that they rent.

So that's about one third as well.

And the last third for us is a little bit unique compared to other airports, because we have such a base of tenants on the airfield, the aerospace businesses that are on the airfield.

- I see, yeah.

- So, FedEx, HAECO, Honda, Cessna, soon to be Boom, Marshall, VSE, and that adds up to...

The rentals that we get from all of those company adds up to about another third.

- I see.

So, you basically... Let's just break it down a little bit.

So, the shops in the airport pay you rent and a fee of sales?

- [Kevin] Correct.

- And then the airlines will, every time they land an airplane, they're gonna pay you X dollars.

- That's correct.

- But on average, what does... You know, for a consumer like me, it's interesting to know these things, how much would a Delta Airlines pay to land their plane in the airport?

- Yeah, so- - [Nido] 300, 500, 1,000?

- Yeah, so our landing fee right now is about $3 per 1,000 pounds landed.

So if you take, say, a DC-9, 150,000 pound airplane, divide it by a 1,000, you get 150, multiply it by three, $450 for that DC-9 to land.

So it's really not a big number in the big picture of the cost of the airlines, you know?

- And it can stay there as long as it wants to?

There's no fee associated to the length of the duration of its landing there.

- So we do have some overnight fees, so if the aircraft is staying overnight, it's called a remain overnight fee.

But other than that, no.

- Where does general aviation comes in all this?

Private... Is it just that companies rent space from you and pay you landing fees again, or is it different formula?

- Yeah, it's different.

It's different over there.

So we've got two fixed base operators, FBOs, in our industry, Signature and Koury Aviation, two separate FBOs, and they lease space for us for their whole campuses.

And then they sublet space to anybody who wants to have a hanger or whatever, and they provide services to them.

We get a fuel flowage percentage from them.

- I see.

- And that's the way that we're able to make revenue from them.

- I see, I see.

- Relatively small piece of our- - Yeah, most of us don't know how an airport really operates on a daily basis.

And how is it administered?

It's not a government agency.

It's not totally independent.

You have a board that's appointed by counties and cities?

- Yeah, so we're an airport authority, and most airport authorities tend to be much more businesslike in the way that they're managed.

It's a quasi-municipal body, that we do have the right to certain municipal things, but not all.

And yes, our board is appointed.

It's a seven member board.

Three of them are appointed by the Guilford County commissioners.

One is appointed by the Forsyth County commissioners.

And then one each by the city councils of Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem.

And this board, you know, really comes together and acts like the board of a small business, is the way I would describe it.

Their focus and their energy is 100% on supporting the airport and making it, you know, the best that it can be.

And we have traditionally had a really amazing board.

You know, it's local business folks, it's local lawyers, educators, all tremendous leaders in their own rights.

- People of a civic interest in a good aviation in the area.

- Yes, sir.

- Kevin, it is now known widely that around your airport, PTI, Piedmont Triad International, there has been a tremendous amount of economic evolution and development.

Name us two or three of those companies.

Tell us what they do.

- Yeah, so Boom Supersonic is probably the most well known out there of the companies, which it's a new company that is developing the next supersonic commercial carrier aircraft.

So, think Concord.

- And what does that mean?

How does that engage PTI?

When you say developing, they're not actually doing the engineering at the airport.

- So this is going to be their main assembly location- - I see.

- For the airplane.

So right now, they're doing the initial engineering in Denver and in other places with a prototype, and with, you know, the development of this model.

But once they have that all designed, then this will be where those airplanes are built, and this is where they will leave to go serve.

- Really?

- Yes.

- I mean, how do you, as executive director of the airport, how do you manage the flow of this airport?

You've got commercial airplanes coming in, you've got general aviation, private airplanes coming in.

Now you're gonna have this Boom Supersonic, they're gonna need runways and they're gonna need time on the runway.

And you have flight plans to be, you know, competed with and so on.

You have the capacity to- - Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier that this airport has this set of assets that I find to be unique in the country, and one of those assets is the fact that even for a mid-size airport that it is, it has a lot of airfield capacity.

You've got two long parallel runways, you've got a crosswind runway that's associated with those two, and then the taxiway systems that are serving all those are pretty robust.

And so, you know, we're probably operating at about 35 or 40% of the capacity of that airfield.

- Really?

- Yes.

- Really?

- So we've got plenty of room for growth.

And you know, as I've said to some people, you know, we've got 1,000 acres of land that we're ready to develop over there.

And I had one reporter ask me after Boom made the selection of the airport, and then right after that, Marshall Aerospace... By the way, Marshall is an MRO.

In our parlance, that's maintenance, repair, and overhaul.

And they only work on C-130, military aircraft.

But, you know, those two companies announced in the last two years together, are gonna employ roughly 2,500 people, ultimately.

They're taking up 9% of all that land that we have available.

So you think about it, we've got a long way to go still, and a lot of opportunities.

- Tremendous potential.

- Yes.

- Which will help the whole area in terms of people living here and raising families here.

- Yeah, and the average household income in Guilford County, in within, really, 40 miles of the airport, is about $52,000.

And remember, that could be two earners, right?

Husband and wife both working.

The average salary on the airport is probably now 75 to $80,000.

Single earner making fully 150% of the average household.

- Which elevates every standard.

- Yes.

So it's a lot of jobs, and they're well-paying jobs.

- Yeah, so Boom Supersonic is one.

- Yes.

- But Honda's another one.

- Honda, of course, has been here since, really, 1998, developing their first airplane, and then subsequent models of that.

And they recently announced a much larger aircraft that they are now working on.

And Honda has been a great partner of the airport now for 24, 25 years.

You know, it's obviously a tremendous world brand, and having them on our airport is...

It's one of the biggest things probably that ever happened on the airport.

And, you know, I like the future for them.

One of the things that we always talk about is making sure that we're reserving enough land for them to grow into one day if they wanna get bigger.

- I think what some of us underestimate is the fact that an airport is a magnet for so many suppliers.

They want to be close to a transportation hub.

Am I right on that?

And if so, give us an example of how that works.

- Yeah, no, you're right on.

And I think that, again, coming back to the assets, if you look at the roadway systems in the whole triad, but especially right around the airport, we have absolutely amazing amounts of capacity on our roadways.

I think better than anywhere in the country that I could think of.

And so when you have that and the whole logistics piece, remember, we've got FedEx, a FedEx hub, and we are a hub airport for FedEx.

And, you know, the ability to move goods and services in between parts of the state, other adjacent states, really, really important.

And I think for, you know, all the companies that locate here, they see that.

They see that there's probably 20 years of growth on these roads without having two hour traffic jams to get their employees to work.

So, I think that that's a huge asset for us.

And, you know, the airport, there's been a lot of descriptions of how airports or airport cities, those kinds of things, and I think that that's just all, it's dead on.

it's obvious to me.

It's obvious.

They are places of employment.

We're really a place of employment in the aerospace industry.

And as a result of having all these OEMs, the original equipment manufacturers that are there, and these big companies that are working on airplanes and the maintenance, repair, and overhaul side, that creates a huge demand for other suppliers to be in the area.

- Yeah.

And even these mega sites that are emerging now, they're gonna bring also all kinds of, if not direct, primary business, residual business to the airport.

Your economic impact in the Triad must be pretty substantial.

- Yeah, so the airport's economic impact to the state is $9 billion a year.

- 9 billion.

- And remember, this is done by the state of North Carolina every two years, and the last one were $9 billion.

So yeah, it's a very substantial impact to the state.

- Speaking of FedEx, Federal Express, I recall when FedEx was thinking about coming to the airport, there was a lot of resistance from residential communities around the airport.

How do you manage that?

I mean, people who live there, of course, they don't want more airplanes, more noise, more congestion and so on.

How do you, the airport, manage that from a PR way, from a community and civic concern perspective?

- Yeah, so we've got a document and a plan that is called a Part 150.

It's an FAA kind of standard.

Most airports that are of any size will have one.

And that really establishes where noise could be expected and how it could be mitigated.

And we've had that in place, lord, 20 years at least.

And, you know, it sets out some measures that are used.

For instance, departures on our eastern parallel runway, they turn just a little bit after they take off, and that puts them over the 68 quarter, 68 south, and they're able to head straight down that large road corridor, which is all commercialized.

So, you're putting the noise over a place that's already loud, not over a community somewhere.

So, you know, and from time to time, we still do get folks who will call and say that they're hearing noise, that it's, you know, annoying them.

And we talk with 'em, we've got a person who's assigned to do nothing but that, and he'll talk to them and work through the issues with them, explain to them what's going on.

You know, we get a lot of touch and goes here, where you've got military aircraft that will fly here, they'll do 20 circuits, just landing, taking off, et cetera, and when folks see that constant passover of that big plane, that sometimes will generate some calls.

- Yeah, yeah.

They train here, effectively.

- They are.

- So, Kevin, you're a civil engineer, you went to Lehigh University, and then you were in the aviation sector as a consultant for many years.

- [Kevin] Yes.

- Who were you consulting with, and what area were you consulting in?

- Yeah, so I worked for a company called the Michael Baker Corporation, which is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where I'm originally from.

And after I left Lehigh, I went back there and worked for them for 20 years almost, I guess.

And I immediately was assigned to the aviation division of that company, and actually went to work on the Pittsburgh International Airport project, which at that time was one of the biggest in the country.

And so kind of cut my teeth on that major project.

And then I had worked with Baker all over the country, and it's no relation, by the way.

But I worked with them at airports all over the country, consulting for airports, until the FedEx project here at PTI was the one that brought us down here.

And Baker was the program manager for the airport authority to basically get that project done.

That rolled into Honda.

And then after that came the opportunity where Ted Johnson, my predecessor, was considering retiring.

- Yeah.

Occasionally I see an airplane for Franklin Graham Ministries.

- Yes, Samaritan's Purse.

- What does that mean?

They have a hanger there?

They fly in and out of there?

How does that get involved at the airport?

- Yeah, so they run an amazing organization called Samaritan's Purse, and the organization is based a little further west in North Carolina, but this is where they maintain their two large airplanes.

So they've got a hanger for them, they've got some ramp space.

You know, and what they do is store needed supplies, supplies that would be needed after a catastrophe.

So for instance, bottled water, diapers, blankets, generators, all of that stuff is stored in warehouses around the airport and around...

They've got a logistics network of their own that's set up.

And when one of those events happens, they load that stuff onto airplanes, and they fly, yeah.

- Fly to wherever.

- Just a quick story, my wife and I, we had our honeymoon in Saint Martin, 1995.

In 2018, we decided to go back there with our kids and show them where it was.

That was right after the hurricane had hit in Saint Martin.

And we were trying to find our old hotel, which actually had been destroyed.

But we're in a neighborhood, we pull up to a red light, and my son says, "Dad, look over there to the right."

Look over there, there was a tractor that was covered with a tarp, and the tarp said "Samaritan's Purse".

That came from here.

- I see.

So your interest in aviation began when you were six years of age, and you had a brother who was a jet fighter, a pilot?

- Yeah, so I have a brother who's 21 years older than me, and he was flying- - [Nido] 21 years older than you?

- Older than me, yes.

There's six of us all together.

- I see.

- Four girls in between.

And he was flying in Vietnam when I was two or three years old.

And yeah, I definitely caught the bug.

He flew the F-4 in Vietnam and flew a number of other airplanes during his career.

And he was always a great hero of mine, and I just got the bug for airplanes.

- You flew with him in the airplane?

- I didn't fly with him.

- That would be illegal.

- I sat in his airplane.

- You sat.

- Yes.

- He let you just go in and look at them.

- Yes, he came back to visit.

We were actually in DC, and he had to be there for something, and he had his F-4 there, and we got to sit in the cockpit, it was pretty cool.

- Kevin, you have your fingers on a lot of things across the state.

You're familiar with economic development in the Tar Heel State.

We have had an incredible decade in North Carolina in terms of economic enhancement.

People are moving to the state.

Florida's a wonderful place, it's become very, very congested.

People love to come to North Carolina, in the mountains and the ocean, and the Piedmont in the middle.

What is your pulse about where we are, and more importantly, what do you see the challenge is as we move forward?

For example, might we also experience significant traffic congestion as we have more and more people moving here?

You know, this is what happened in other states, right?

So it's about highways, it's about rail, it's about airplanes, et cetera.

In the circles that you travel in, what is it that you see?

- What I would start with, Nido, is the state is really on a tear, no question, and that's the result of a lot of people's hard work and investment, starting at the state government levels, and the state legislature has been hugely supportive of this airport, and the whole state.

The governor, obviously.

And I think that investment is now paying off, you know?

And organizations like EDPNC, the Economic Development Partnership for North Carolina, regional groups, like Piedmont Triad Partnership, just huge supporters of that growth.

And it's working, it is paying off.

A lot of cooperation statewide, which honestly, when I first moved here 25 years ago, I didn't see as much of that.

Now the cooperation is there.

And so I see the next 10 years for us as being boom time, you know, pun intended.

You know, Boom was just our first win.

Marshall right after that.

We're gonna have some other wins.

We're very laser focused on the industry and, you know, the ones that we would like to get here.

- [Nido] There's momentum in the state.

- There's momentum.

There's definitely momentum.

- Are we gonna have enough workforce to meet all the needs of all these companies moving here?

- You know, it's the number one problem in the country, as you know, and certainly something to worry about.

But at least from the prospection, perspective, excuse me, of the aerospace industry, our partners on the airfield and at other areas around the Triad are working together to solve that problem.

And again, that's kind of new, too.

That started probably five or 10 years ago.

But working together and then working with Forsyth Tech, with Guilford Tech, with the schools, they can then develop and provide more people in that pipeline to continue to feed the demand.

And look, that's such a good problem to have, right?

If you think about it.

- Absolutely.

If you're gonna have a problem, that's the one you want.

- Needing people, it's a problem, and you gotta fix it.

- It's better than not having jobs for the people we have.

- Exactly.

- Yeah.

So, you're bullish about the future.

- [Kevin] Very.

- And you're bullish about the state as a whole, Piedmont Triad region for sure.

And what's next for you?

More growth at the airport?

- You know, so as I said before, with those two wins, we've only used up 10% of everything we have.

And we're ready to fill up the next 90%.

- [Nido] Potential is enormous.

- And what we're really starting to talk about now with our current board is the need to go beyond that 1,000 acres of land that we have and start thinking about the next, really, 50 years.

And where does the airport go to next?

Because, you know, what if a Boeing or an Airbus wants to come in and take 500 acres?

- Kevin, thank you for being with me on "Side by Side", and best wishes to you always.

- And to you.

Thank you so much.

[bright music] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] - [Narrator] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - [Narrator] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley.

This is home.

- [Narrator] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people, smart service.

- [Narrator] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music]