Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge was just about to wrap up her time with American Airlines nearly six years ago when she started getting calls from civic leaders throughout St. Louis. They were asking whether she’d consider discussing the director position at Lambert-St. Louis International (STL).
After nearly three decades with three airlines, she’d been intending to take some time off and assess her next move. But the more she heard about the role, the more it sounded like a good fit – and it would be a do-over of sorts. She’d enjoyed her time at American but also had a bad taste in her mouth left over from having been involved in American’s reducing STL from major hub to focus city status, a move that led to the disappearance of the airline’s flights from the airport by nearly 90 percent.
“It had been hard for me to watch us shrink the operation here having run the hub for so many years,” Hamm-Niebruegge says. “It was a very hard thing to do, so the thought of being able to say, ‘I think we can bring the airport back, I think we can do a lot of things,’ was sort of the challenge I needed in my career. I needed something that would be an upswing of a challenge, not a tear down. It was a great opportunity.”
She met several times with St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and several other civic leaders over the next couple months and sold them, too. She began her new role Jan. 3, 2010, less than a week after leaving the airline world behind.
Starting The Turnaround
During Hamm-Niebruegge’s time with American, she realized she was the company’s main face in the community. She’d taken an active role with chamber groups, non-profits and other organizations to show the airline was a partner in the community. Her direct, honest approach to explaining American’s business decisions also seemed to resonate. It was the relationships she built during that time, she says, that were instrumental in getting calls about the director job.
As soon as she took the helm at STL, she again began working within the community to rebuild relationships that had been strained after the airport lost its hub status and explain her thoughts behind how the airport could move forward.
The complete article appears in the November print issue of Airport Revenue News. Click Here to subscribe.
