Apr. 22—Barney Helmick has been the director of Flagstaff's Pulliam Airport for over a decade, and this month he announced his retirement.
In 2015, Helmick was named Arizona Airport Executive of the Year. He's been the recipient of the Arizona Airport Association's President's Award, and the man in charge at Flagstaff's airport since 2010.
His leadership skills, colleagues say, have propelled the airport forward.
For one thing, Helmick was instrumental in securing direct flights to Denver.
"Barney and I spent two to three years really revamping how we would look for getting additional commercial airline service. We were successful with acquiring United Airlines with a Denver route in 2019," said Heidi Hansen, the economic vitality director for the City of Flagstaff.
Now his supervisor at the city, she first met Helmick as a peer when she worked at the convention and visitor's bureau.
United Airlines stopped running flights from Flagstaff to Denver in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Hansen credits Helmick with preserving a good relationship with the airline despite the present situation.
"Even though the airline market is volatile and changing, he's always continued to take a positive attitude and his strong work ethic has allowed us to continue to forge ahead," Hansen said.
Adversity and volatility in aviation is nothing new for Helmick, who worked in airports before and during 9/11, has watched TSA become what it is today, and one night in 1999 was on the front lines of a milestone technological event.
"Y2K in our business, that was a bigger event than people think," he said.
As the world entered a new millennium, one time zone at a time, Helmick was watching. A few airports had trouble with their systems understanding the date change from "99" to "00," but internationally, leaders in aviation worked together to solve any technical problems on the fly.
"It was fun to follow that all the way around until it got to Arizona and see what was going on. Without all of those connections and networking through those organizations, I don't know that we could have done that so accurately," Helmick said.
That same degree of cooperation would prove helpful as airlines and airports grappled with the aftermath of one of the most impactful terrorist attacks in American History. On September 11, 2001, Helmick worked in airport communications at Sky Harbor International Airport.
"A lot of people don't know that airports around the country shut down. For the commercial service airports, it was just three days. The only thing operating was these communications emergency operations centers and a handful of maintenance and operations people at different airports to maintain security," Helmick said. "It put those of us working there into a spotlight. We had everybody from the mayor to the governor coming in to see what was going on. We worked with the military. At that time, TSA didn't exist. It was run by the FAA. It put us in the spotlight because we were running the show and there was nobody else at the airport."
After 9/11, Helmick decided he wanted to run an airport. He went back to school to earn the necessary degrees and eventually went on to direct the Phoenix Goodyear and Phoenix Deer Valley airports before moving north to Flagstaff.
During Y2K and 9/11, Helmick saw the value of a powerful network, and his strength as a leader had been built on a fundamental appreciation for people and professional connections. He fondly describes airport directors in Yuma, Phoenix and Sonoma, California, and mentions them all by their first names.
Airports rely on people in order to operate smoothly as cities within cities, well-oiled machines that get planes in the air. Helmick has an almost inherent understanding of that.
"Because Barney has done just about every position you can think of, he is one of the best people to train others and share all that he knows. He's been able to develop his team from the beginning. He's very much about helping to promote them and make sure they have a long career," Hansen said.
Helmick will never forget his first day working at an airport. It was Memorial Day of 1988. He hired on with Sky Harbor and began to build a career from the ground up.
"It was a simple job. I worked for the City of Phoenix as an aircraft fueler, and customer service agent. We did charters, a little bit of everything, similar to what the airlines do. It was a great learning experience," Helmick said.
For the last decade in Flagstaff, Helmick has been building a team — and he encourages his employees to earn their own experience.
"Team building is fun. If you're a manager and you don't like team building, you shouldn't be a manager," he said. "I don't look at things as, 'I'm going to make the decision and we're all going to deal with it.' That's not team building. I tell all my staff, 'Take ownership!'"
Before that first job at Sky Harbor, Helmick worked for 10 years in construction. An old boss told him he could always defend actions, but inaction was indefensible. Today, Helmick passes that lesson in responsibility to the team he assembled in Flagstaff.
While at the helm of Phoenix Goodyear Airport, Helmick also had the opportunity to build his team.
"It's a fairly busy general aviation airport. A lot of flight training. We had branches of the German Airforce there. It was an airport that was owned by the City of Phoenix, but located in the City of Goodyear — which gave me the opportunity to work with two different government agencies," Helmick said.
Connecting more than just flights
As an airport director, Helmick is constantly working with different government agencies to make sure his airport is running in compliance with federal and municipal regulations while meeting the needs of the community it serves.
"You deal with various different businesses and contractual agreements, making sure that they're compliant. You're working with all the federal agencies, the list goes on forever," Helmick said. "Most people think, 'Oh it's just the FAA.' Then we have TSA, and then we have the EPA, the Department of Justice, an agency that deals with disadvantaged businesses and ADA compliance. Dealing with those is the fun part of my job."
He also lists strategic planning and working with the city among his favorite parts of running an airport.
"Barney is not only very actively involved in his section of the airport, he is very helpful in all of our sections in the economic vitality divisions," Hansen said. "He lends support to all of our economic leaders. He's well-liked throughout the City of Flagstaff; people value his expertise."
When he was director of the airport in Deer Valley, it was the 19th busiest airport in the country — running more than 400,000 operations in a day. Hansen added that the depth and breadth of Helmick's experience has made him an invaluable partner.
The airport director's brain houses a dragon's hoard of knowledge about aviation, airlines and airport functionality.
"We see a lot of what they call wind-sheers here in Flagstaff. If the wind gets too strong, they can't land or take off. They fly into the wind to take off, but if that wind exceeds, say, 40 knots at an angle, they can't leave," Helmick explained during a casual conversation about weather. "It changes from airplane to airplane, because there are different safety standards for each aircraft. A large 757 can take off in things that a smaller 172 2C airplane could not take off in."
Helmick plans to preserve the networks he's worked hard to build and continue to share the history and well-earned wisdom that made him an asset to the City of Flagstaff for more than 13 years.
"I definitely will be staying in contact with my friends and networks and the Arizona Airports Association. I mentioned the Arizona Association of Airport Directors. They have a regional branch called the Southwest Chapter that I'll stay with, mainly just to answer questions, share history, things like that," Helmick said. "I've been asked to work with the city's emergency manager program as an alternate. I've offered to stick with that."
He'll leave behind a series of capital improvement projects, already in the works.
"The airport is going to have a transformation that people are going to be very happy with," Hansen said.
Right now improvements to the airport's parking lot are already underway. Improvements to the taxi lane, fire sprinkler system, ramps and hangers are also in the works. Additionally, the airport is slotted to install a new café.
Many of those improvements are funded because of Helmick's advocacy.
Hansen said a lot of the current capital improvements are made possible by funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
"It was important to have not only American and United Airlines acquired at the time CARES funding came out. That was really important because our airport was offered $18.1 million in that funding, versus other airports that were only getting like $100,000. It was a great opportunity to get a lot of improvements done with our hangers and so on," Hansen said. "Even though United had to leave the market for now, it really was a feather in our community's cap, helping us with the funding we're putting to good use."
Looking forward
The next airport director will need to make expanding air service to Flagstaff a priority, Helmick said, as ultimately it comes down to the airline's willingness to operate out of Pulliam.
"A lot of that is beyond our control; it's a matter of convincing [airlines] that we can put enough butts in seats to do it," Helmick said.
Beginning Friday the task of expanding service will fall to Helmick's team and his successor — who has not been officially named yet.
Then it's Helmick's turn to catch a flight on his way to leisurely visits with family in Alaska and Tennessee as nothing more or less than a passenger.
"Then I'll pull a Travis Tritt and take a three-day ride on my Harley," he said.
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