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.

FMI: www.faa.gov