It took almost three years, a 1,000-page application document aimed at convincing the Federal Aviation Administration of its qualifications and negotiating a 40-year lease with the city, but the Syracuse Regional Airport Authority, as of early March, holds the operating certificate for Syracuse Hancock International (SYR).
That means SYR joins a slowly growing list of airports that have transitioned over the past decade from being a municipally run entity to operating as an autonomous organization with its own board oversight.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the legislation establishing the authority in August 2011. It created an 11-member board that will be filled with appointments from the city, the county, several surrounding small towns and a school district near SYR.
The move was made with the support of the city, which has many challenges with which it deals on a daily basis that were constantly competing with the needs of the airport, says Christina Callahan, who led SYR when it was a city department and has become executive director of the authority.
“In order to be competitive and to be able to attract new service from airlines, we had to follow a governance model that is that of an authority rather than just being a city department,” she says. “The city is facing so many challenges. An airport really needs to be independent and have a governance structure that is really focused on the airport.”
Move Pays Off Quickly In Cost Savings
Callahan noted that the transfer happened just recently so there aren’t yet a lot of concrete results on which to base its success or failure. But the airport and city have worked together over the past couple of years on the transition, and SYR did recognize significant savings early on by contracting out its law-enforcement services at the airport. Previously, the airport had relied on the city of Syracuse’s police department to provide security, but the switch is projected to about cut in half what had been a $4 million expense….
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