Podcast: Jacksonville Aviation Authority CEO Mark VanLoh talks Covid, growth and what the future holds (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Jacksonville Business Journal Editor Timothy Gibbons recently spoke with Mark VanLoh, CEO of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, for a segment of the Florida Business Minds podcast.
Sponsored by TECO Peoples Gas, the audio series features candid conversations with top business leaders from the Orlando, South Florida, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville regions.
VanLoh has led the Jacksonville authority since 2018, steering the organization through a period of growth, pivoting to deal with the challenges of Covid and then charting a path forward as passengers returned to the air more quickly than had been expected. VanLoh brings to the job decades of aviation experience, having been in charge of the airports in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Kansas City, Missouri; and Chattanooga, Tennessee before coming to Florida.
In our conversation, VanLoh talks about how the airport managed its way through the Covid crash, how it pivoted when passengers returned and what the future of the flight looks like both at Jacksonville International Airport and the other facilities in North Florida.
Find more Florida Business Minds podcasts here.
The following is a brief excerpt from the interview, edited for length and clarity.
You’ve talked about the number of passengers coming to Jacksonville. In recent years, there’s also been more interest from airlines starting service to Jacksonville. What’s driving that?
I think Covid helped out a lot. I think it put a lot of eyes on Florida, when people who were trapped in their homes working remotely decided, well, I could do that on a beach somewhere in Florida. So a lot of the airlines we had been talking to over the years finally saw the light and said, ‘Well, you know, maybe we should put some service down in the Jacksonville area’ — and it’s working out really well.
As passengers returned, the Aviation Authority returned to its plans to build Concourse B at Jacksonville International Airport. What will the new concourse bring to the table?
If you fly into Jacksonville late at night or leave early in the morning, you will see aircraft parked at all our gates and all over the ramps: There just isn’t enough gate space here for the airlines. Concourse B will give us six new passenger gates with a ton more concessions. People really want food, beverages and other things in the airport, and this will almost double what we have today, as well as giving us another airline lounge. It’s going to be a fantastic new expansion for the airport — and additionally, we’ll bring in even more flights.
We’ve talked about the specifics of going through Covid and then diving headlong into a one of the biggest expansions the airport has seen, which has to be challenging for management standpoint. How do you approach that as the CEO?
It’s hiring and retaining the right people. Our staff went from Covid to ramping up very quickly, getting this terminal back on track. It’s just getting everybody motivated to go ‘All right, we’re back. Let’s go. It’s all hands on deck’ — and everybody stepped up to the plate. We all sing from the same song sheet and we all want the best.
Tune into the Florida Business Minds podcast episode above for the full interview, where we talk about how the industrial growth the Jacksonville aviation sector is seeing, what VanLoh expects to happen with business travel and construction projects that are now underway.