What will it take to lead an airport in 2035?

AeroTime columnist Arpad Szakal is a Partner at Cormis Partners, where he leads the firm’s Aviation & Transportation practice. An aviation lawyer by training, he advises boards and leadership teams on senior appointments across aviation, transportation and infrastructure, and writes on leadership, governance and talent in the sector. 

The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of AeroTime.   

The role of the airport CEO is changing and doing so quicker than professionals can adapt to the new demands of the position. 

Boards know this, and their shortlists reflect it. The executives who reach the top seat in 2035 will look different from those who held it in 2015, both in the experiences they carry and the judgment and credibility they are expected to demonstrate. 

From our search work across Europe and the Americas, several patterns are emerging that illustrate where the leadership pipeline is struggling to keep pace. 

Airport experience still matters 

One of the clearest lessons is that importing executives from outside aviation has not always worked as boards expected. 

Infrastructure investors, retail CEOs and consultants have been brought into airport leadership roles on the premise that commercial sophistication can compensate for a lack of sector experience. Often, it cannot. 

Airport management combines regulatory intensity, complex political relationships and an unusual relationship with airlines, which can simultaneously be customers, partners, and commercial adversaries. Executives coming from other industries can underestimate those dynamics, and several high-profile appointments following this model have ended early. 

At the same time, another leadership pipeline is strengthening, particularly in Europe: the move from CFO to CEO. 

In markets where airports operate under concession or regulated-asset frameworks, the logic is understandable. Boards increasingly value capital discipline and financial sophistication. 

But financial leadership and enterprise leadership are not the same thing. 

A CEO must also be able to manage complex transformation, maintain the confidence of a large workforce, and navigate political and media scrutiny. Leaders who have not developed those skills can discover the gaps very publicly once they reach the top job. 

There is also a geographical dimension to the problem. 

New concession programs in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Peru are creating senior roles faster than the regional talent base can supply them. That is contributing to an increasingly international leadership market, with European airport executives moving into Latin American roles and Latin American executives with international credentials being recruited into North America and Europe. 

The underlying problem is simple: the supply of executives with demonstrable experience of leading through this environment remains thinner than the number of roles required. 

What boards increasingly expect from an airport CEO 

Formal job descriptions only tell part of the story. In practice, five capabilities are becoming increasingly important in determining who gets the role. 

The first is ecosystem leadership. Airport performance depends heavily on organizations and people who do not report to the CEO: airlines, ground handlers, regulators, rail operators, concessionaires, investors and governments. 

None can simply be directed. All need to be aligned. 

The move from hierarchical management towards coalition leadership is therefore not merely a question of leadership style. It reflects the structure of the airport business itself. 

Boards increasingly want evidence that a candidate has done this successfully. Who have they brought together? What did they persuade competing stakeholders to agree on? And what happened when those stakeholders disagreed? 

The second capability is geopolitical intelligence. Helsinki, for example, lost roughly 30% of its transfer traffic as the result of a geopolitical event it had no role in causing. Airports in the Gulf are reshaping long-haul economics for airports stretching from London to Lagos, while airports in Central and Eastern Europe are having to rethink traffic strategies. 

An airport CEO who cannot understand how macroeconomic and geopolitical forces translate into network economics, bilateral risk and strategic positioning is operating with a significant blind spot. 

This is increasingly a frontline leadership capability, not something delegated to a background briefing. 

Third is investor-grade capital fluency. Infrastructure investors, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds now own or co-own airports around the world. Their expectations of management are different from those of traditional government-appointed boards. 

They expect CEOs to engage with capital allocation, balance-sheet discipline and return dynamics as peers rather than simply receiving decisions made by shareholders. 

An executive who has never sat at a financing table or managed a public-private partnership transaction may therefore enter a CEO selection process with a significant gap in their experience. 

Technology governance is becoming equally important. The next generation of airport CEOs does not need to consist of technologists. What boards increasingly require is the judgment to make high-stakes technology decisions despite incomplete information. 

That means knowing when to invest in artificial intelligence, when to challenge a vendor, how to govern biometrics and data, and how to manage the workforce implications of automation. 

Copenhagen built its digital platform through a joint venture instead of entirely in-house, while Changi is redesigning nearly a third of its aviation roles. 

The question is not whether the CEO understands every technology. It is whether they can govern its adoption. 

Finally, boards are looking for transformation credibility. At airports undergoing significant change, simply having managed growth is no longer enough. Boards want executives who can demonstrate that they have led transformation commercially, operationally and culturally. 

Where did they take an organization from a position of difficulty to one of strength? What did they change? And what did it cost them to do it? 

Transformation credibility remains one of the most undersupplied capabilities in the airport leadership market, and one of the hardest to manufacture during an assessment process. 

Three routes to the top – and the weaknesses each creates 

Senior airport leaders generally arrive at CEO candidacy through one of several recognizable career paths. Each brings advantages, but each also creates characteristic gaps. 

The first is the organic insider. These executives bring deep institutional knowledge, strong credibility with the workforce and genuine sector expertise. Their risk is that external boards and institutional investors may see their experience as too narrow. 

For them, exposure to capital markets, investor relations or a public-private partnership transaction before reaching CEO assessment can make a significant difference. 

The second is the commercial transplant. These executives typically arrive from sectors such as retail, property or hospitality and can transform the conversation around non-aeronautical revenue. 

Their weakness is often an underestimation of regulatory complexity and the political dimensions of airport management. 

The solution is not simply to learn the theory of aviation. It requires direct exposure to airline economics, regulatory frameworks and stakeholder management. 

The third is the cross-sector parachutist. These leaders may come from adjacent infrastructure, consulting or investment banking and bring significant financial and program-management credibility. 

Their challenge is the time required to establish credibility on aviation-specific issues, combined with a temptation to begin delivering change before they have fully understood the organization. 

For that reason, their first 18 months may need to be approached as much as a learning mandate as a delivery mandate. 

The executives who ultimately reach the top are not necessarily those with the fewest gaps. They are the ones who identify those gaps early enough to address them before a board does it for them. 

Building the profile of the airport CEO of 2035 

For executives with ambitions to run an airport, the implication is that career development cannot simply mean accumulating progressively larger operational responsibilities. 

Some of the most valuable experiences on a future CEO’s CV come from difficult periods: turnarounds, crises and forced strategic pivots. 

Boards want evidence of what an executive did when circumstances deteriorated, not merely evidence of strong performance when conditions were benign. 

International exposure matters as well. A substantial assignment in another market can change an executive’s understanding of the industry, expand their network and expose them to regulatory, commercial and political environments that domestic experience cannot replicate. 

With airport leadership becoming increasingly international, executives who position themselves within that cross-border talent market can gain an important advantage. 

Board literacy is another capability that needs to be developed before it becomes essential. The transition from executive management to a genuinely board-facing leadership role is where many otherwise strong candidates stall. Understanding how to write board papers, work with non-executive directors and operate within governance structures should therefore be treated as a leadership capability rather than a box to tick immediately before a CEO selection process. 

Airport leaders also increasingly need a public point of view. Executives attracting serious CEO consideration are often visible within the sector. They speak at industry events, publish and develop recognizable positions on the future of aviation. 

That visibility is not a substitute for experience. But in an increasingly international market for airport leadership, demonstrating that experience – and the thinking behind it – matters. 

The airport CEO of 2035 is already building those credentials today. The post What will it take to lead an airport in 2035? appeared first on AeroTime.

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