Aug. 15--The Memphis airport board locked in Scott Brockman to succeed retiring chief executive Larry Cox on Thursday, brushing aside talk of an outside search with an emphatic endorsement of Cox's right-hand man.
Voting unanimously, with one member absent and brief discussion, the board elevated Brockman to a job for which he was hand-picked a decade ago.
Brockman, who turns 52 on Friday, came to Memphis in 2003 as chief financial officer and executive vice president and has been chief operating officer since 2009. A Collierville resident, he worked at Tucson, Des Moines, Iowa, and Sarasota, Fla., airports before Memphis.
Citing the airport's role as a leading economic driver for Memphis and a closely watched civic institution, board chairman Jack Sammons called for Brockman's nomination. He said he considered it the most important decision he'll ever make as board chairman. "Everybody out there has an opinion about how this airport should be run," he said.
"Decisions on hiring talent are the most important decisions a business executive ever makes," Sammons added. "Sometimes you're fortunate enough to promote from within, and sometimes you search the world for the best candidate. We're indeed fortunate that we have a seasoned executive like Scott ... I'm 100 percent convinced Scott Brockman is the right person to assume the job, the presidency of our airport."
It's uncertain exactly when Brockman will step into his new job. The Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority oversees Memphis International Airport, which combines the world's second-busiest cargo airport, thanks to the FedEx Express world hub, with about 130 passenger flights a day.
Cox, a 42-year airport employee whose total compensation is $350,000 a year, has served notice of plans to retire no later than July 14, 2014 under the city's deferred option retirement program.
The airport authority, both top executives and board members, has caught flak for the steep decline in passenger service since Delta Air Lines merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008. In October, Delta will officially stop calling Memphis one of its hubs as it reduces flights to about 60 a day, compared to a combined 240 a day from Delta and Northwest before the merger.
While airport officials and experts have blamed the reductions on market forces and airline industry contractions beyond the airport's control, critics on a 5,700-member Facebook page, Delta Does Memphis, have complained about airport management and advocated an open search for Cox's replacement.
Board member Herbert Hilliard said after the meeting that hiring a search firm would have been costly with no better result than to confirm that Memphis already had the best candidate on board.
"When we hired Scott, one of the things we wanted to do was to make sure we had a potential successor for Larry," Hilliard said. "Scott's been groomed to take over for Larry, so why would we go out and do a national search? If you were to pick the top 10 airport executives in the country, Scott would be in there."
Board member John Stokes was absent. Also voting for Brockman were Pace Cooper, Jim Keras, Jon Thompson and Ruby Wharton.
Copyright 2013 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
