Greg Principato to Retire

Founded in 1905, the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) is the oldest national aviation club in the United States and among the world’s oldest such organizations.

On 08 March 2023, the NAA announced that Greg Principato, its president and CEO since 2016, will retire from the association effective 15 September 2023.

NAA board chair Jim Albaugh stated: “On behalf of the board of directors I want to thank Greg for all he has done for the NAA. Greg not only successfully built a strong foundation for the NAA’s next chapter, he also provided impressive strategic leadership during COVID. We are grateful for the expertise and knowledge he provided over the last seven-years.”

For over four-decades, Principato weathered Capitol Hill’s slings and arrows, taking his first tentative steps into aviation’s comparatively docile sphere in 1986, when his mentor, then Virginia Governor Gerald Baliles, recognized the young Principato’s executive abilities and assigned him important roles in Baliles’s historic transportation program—the selfsame legislative undertaking by which the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority was established. Governor Baliles also involved Principato in work that led, ultimately, to the opening of the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum.

In 1993, building on his work under Governor Baliles’s auspices, Principato served as Executive Director of the National Commission to Ensure a Strong Competitive Airline Industry—a Clinton administration initiative that laid the groundwork for the eventual passage of the General Aviation Revitalization Act and hastened the deregulation of airline routes and fares and helped actualize open skies international air service agreements. The Commission’s report, titled Change, Challenge and Competition, is still referred to thirty-years later.

An advocate of aviation in all its incarnations, Principato came to the NAA by way of the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO)—prior to which he served as the President and CEO of the Airport Council International-North America (ACI-NA), the trade association for North American airports. Under Principato’s leadership the ACI-NA more fully united U.S. and Canadian Airports into a cohesive organization. Principato also played a leading role in reforming the conventions by which global airports are organized—an enterprise that enabled the ACI-NA to better focus on strategic issues germane to the wellbeing of global air-travel and commerce.

Principato remarked: “The NAA has been an essential part of America’s aviation history since its founding in 1905. Leading NAA was a dream come true for me personally, and a wonderful opportunity to add to NAA’s unique and historic legacy. I will be forever grateful to the Board and membership and can’t wait to see what is next for the entire association and the aviation industry.”

Mr. Albaugh concluded: “Greg leaves a remarkable legacy. He will be remembered at NAA as a person who expanded the reach of the organization and drew in all of the varied elements of aerospace.”

FMI: www.naa.aero