Board promotes airport’s superintendent of maintenance and operations after months-long nationwide search
Andres Delgado was appointed the new manager of Juneau International Airport on Thursday night by the airport’s board of directors.
Delgado, the airport’s maintenance and operations superintendent since July 2022, is scheduled to take over as manager Monday at an annual salary of $168,958.40, according to a press release. He will replace Interim Manager Dave Palmer, who has been in charge since the retirement of Patty Wahto in April, following a 27-year career.
Delgado previously worked as the assistant operations manager and marketing program manager at Bakersfield Jet Center by Loyd’s Aviation in California between 2019 and 2022.
Since moving to Juneau, he has recently taken on increased duties, including supervising an emergency response exercise last month to a simulated airplane crash that involved multiple agencies.
“I have a pretty good background knowledge now of this airport, of the projects that we’re going through,” Delgado said during a July 21 interview, following his formal interview that day by board members. “I have a good working relationship with the staff, have a pretty good idea of where finances are, and where there may be areas for improvement. And so I want to leverage this knowledge and use it to the benefit of the community.”
He said one of the reasons the manager’s job appeals to him is the small size of Juneau’s airport compared to major cities such as Los Angeles, where “every person that works at LAX has one hat there. I have multiple hats (here).”
“You have a very small airport, a very tight-knit community who’s involved in all aspects of this airport in one way or another, but it has the exposure to all of the full-fat regulatory requirements that running a commercial airport needs,” he said. “So what do I get out of it? I get the experience of working at a full-fat complex airport with helicopter operations, with floatplane operations, commercial operations, (general aviation) tenants…but without the added complexities of 50 million passengers.”
Supervising operations and maintenance means there is familiarity with the day-to-day operations involving passenger traffic, cargo shipments, facility functions and other practical matters, Delgado said. Among the challenges will be working on longer-range issues such as mission goals and budgeting with entities such as the Juneau Assembly which oversees the city-owned airport.
“The learning curve that I’ll have is the politics, the interaction, the nuances, all the background,” he said. “Patty has all the context after 27 years of being here, but I don’t have that context.”
