DAYTONA BEACH — Karen Feaster was named director of Daytona Beach International Airport this past week. Her promotion comes 28 years after she began her career as an unpaid intern.
"When I started, I was in the old terminal building where the customs building is now," she recalled. "There were no jet bridges. You had to walk on to the tarmac and up the stairs to board a plane."
Feaster, 52, credits the late Dennis McGee with giving her the opportunity. McGee was the airport's director from 1985 until his retirement in 2010.
"Dennis was my first mentor," Feaster recalled in an interview Tuesday afternoon in her office at the airport. The Volusia County Council unanimously approved her promotion earlier that day.
"I heard (McGee) being interviewed on the Big John radio show and I wrote him a letter to let him know how I was inspired to follow in his footsteps. His background was very similar to mine," Feaster said.
McGee responded to the letter by offering the recent Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate an unpaid internship at the airport.
Feaster became an airport operations volunteer in April 1992. She also continued working a regular job as a tenant coordinator for a local commercial property management company.
She finally quit that job to join the airport staff as a full-time employee in January 1993. She began as an airport operations agent and received several promotions over the years. She moved into the management ranks when she became director of properties and finance in 1995.
McGee surprised Feaster in 2002 when he pulled out and read aloud to the entire airport staff the letter she wrote him 10 years earlier. "I was surprised and touched," she said.
Feaster became deputy airport director in February 2015. In that role, she managed day-to-day operations as well as capital improvement projects such as the current $14 million makeover of the main terminal.
That allowed her then-and-still-current boss, Rick Karl, to serve as both airport director as well as the county's director of aviation and economic resources.
Feaster's latest promotion allows Karl to focus on overseeing the county's aviation and economic resources department, which includes economic development.
County Manager George Recktenwald at Tuesday's County Council meeting said Feaster essentially had already been handling the responsibilities of airport director.
"I felt it was time that we put in place the actual airport director," he said.
Karl said he couldn't agree more. "Karen has been an integral part of the leadership team at the airport for many years," he told The News-Journal. "This is a well-deserved promotion and I'm very proud to see her being recognized for all of her hard work and professionalism."
Feaster's new titles comes with a modest bump in pay. She will now earn $122,000 a year, up from the $113,643 annual salary she made as deputy director. Karl's salary as department director remains unchanged at $163,263 a year.
Feaster said there are no plans at this time to fill the deputy director position.
And for those who are wondering, Feaster's salary does not come from local tax dollars.
The county-owned airport operates as an "enterprise fund," meaning that it is responsible for generating its own revenues. Its money comes from the rents it receives from tenants as well as fees paid by the airlines and car rental companies.
The airport's annual operating budget is $14 million.
Feaster is the first woman to become airport director at Daytona Beach.
She doesn't have many female counterparts. Only approximately one in six airport managers nationally are women, according to the nonprofit Women in Aviation International.
The closest one is Diane Crews, the CEO at Orlando Sanford International Airport, who plans to retire in September.
One of the wall decorations in Feaster's office is a large blown-up photo of an Eastern Airlines stewardess taken in the early 1970s.
Feaster insists that there is no significance in having the photo so prominently displayed. "I like it because it reminds me of the glamour of the heyday of air travel," she said.
Her promotion comes at a challenging time for airports and airline industry because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Passenger traffic at Daytona plummeted 93% to an all-time low of just 4,338 in April. The airport had more than 66,000 the same month a year ago.
Feaster acknowledged it could be years before air travel numbers nationally return to pre-pandemic levels. Nevertheless, she sees signs that the rebound at Daytona may have already begun.
The number of arriving and departing air travelers at the airport improved to nearly 11,000 last month. In July, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines are set to increase the number of daily flights here to a combined total of seven each way, up from three in May.
Also encouraging is American's decision to start using a larger jetliner on one of its daily flights. The plane is an Airbus A319 which offers 52 more seats.
"There are many other markets where American could've assigned the A319, including two other Florida markets, but they chose Daytona Beach," said airline industry consultant Will Berchelmann of Volaire Aviation Consultants. "It's a testament to the scope of Volusia County's recovery versus other markets in the American system."
Feaster said she never dreamed when she became an intern all those years ago that she would end up becoming airport director.
"Most people in airport management, you have to move (around the country) to advance," she said.
Like Feaster, McGee also spent his entire career at Daytona Beach International Airport. He starting out as an airport operations agent in 1978 after graduating from Embry-Riddle.
To have two airport directors spend their entire careers here is a remarkable feat for Daytona Beach, Feaster said.
"I think it says a lot for the county and for the area," she said.
Feaster lives in an unincorporated part of the county, near Port Orange and Samsula with her husband Dave, who does software development for the food service industry. The couple have two college-age kids: a daughter, Paige, and son, Logan. Both are students at Florida State University.
Clayton Park is business editor of The Daytona Beach News-Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
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