Thu, Mar 19, 2009
Miniace To Lead Central Region; Vernon Promoted To NW Mountain
Region Administrator
Now almost two months in to
his administration, President Barack Obama has yet to appoint his
nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration... but the
agency is shoring up its ranks with Thursday's announcement Joe
Miniace and Kathryn Vernon have been named administrators for the
Central Region and Northwest Mountain Region, respectively.
Both names may be familiar to regular ANN readers, particularly
if you've kept up with the volatile state of affairs between
the agency and air traffic controllers.
Miniace will take over the Central Region on May 4, following
the retirement of Chris Blum. Miniace is deputy assistant
administrator for human resource management and strategic labor
relations, a position he has held since May 2005.
As Aero-News reported, months after his
appointment Miniace was thrown into the quagmire surrounding
contentious negotiations between the agency and the National Air
Traffic Controllers Association.
Under Miniace's oversight, that situation quickly devolved into
the
FAA declaring an impasse in talks in April
2006. To this day, controllers are working under a
contract forced upon them... which, according to NATCA, has
resulted in a number of experienced controllers taking early
retirement (or quitting outright) leaving less-experienced trainees
to fill those roles.
Vernon has been the director of western terminal operations,
based in Seattle. Her starting date has not been determined, but
she will take over for Steve Bernett, who has been acting regional
administrator the last few months. Of particular note, Vernon left
in November 2006 to serve in Iraq for a year.
More recently,
Vernon made headlines this week as she tiptoed
the line between admitting a memo sent last month by Kevin Stark,
Acting Air Traffic Manager at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control
Center, "leaves a lot of questions out there" about the state of
air traffic control operations over the western city... while also
stressing "[t]here is no reason for the public to lose confidence"
in air safety in Colorado skies.
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