It is the busiest airport in the world.
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport served 74 million passengers last year and conducted 895,000 aircraft takeoffs and landings. It serves as landlord to 93 airlines and 142 business tenants. Fifty thousand people go to work there each day.
It is a city unto itself - a mass of mammoth machines, bustling facilities, tight schedules, and rushing humanity, all relying on a proportionately small number of airport personnel to make the place run the way the manuals say it should. They are guided in that endeavor by a wide array of supervisors, foremen, managers, and directors.
But, up and down the line, all of them answer to one woman: Mary Rose Loney.
Yes, she's in charge of it all - and, as a matter of fact, two other Chicago airports as well.
The 1983 graduate of UNLV's master of public administration program is the commissioner of aviation for the Chicago Airport System, which includes not only O'Hare, but also Midway Airport and Meigs Field.
Loney is essentially the chief executive officer of the airport system. Her responsibilities include overseeing an operating budget of $556 million and directing a $2 billion capital development project for the system. She manages 8,550 acres of land and facilities that comprise the three airports, including six terminal buildings, 13 runways, and 35,000 parking spaces. She supervises a staff of 2,200 and oversees labor contracts with 17 different collective bargaining units.
Loney has held top-level management jobs at six major metropolitan airports over the course of her 20-year career. Most of her work days begin at 7 a.m. and end at 11 p.m.
"My oxygen is pretty much devoted to aviation," she says with a smile, suggesting that her time commitment alone explains her rise to the top post in airport management. While commitment did in fact play a pivotal role in her ascent, she acknowledges that there was more to it than that.
There were the years of building technical competence, both on the job and through academic means, as well as her uncommon dedication to her career. There were some gender barriers to break. There were also fair amounts of risk taking and tough decision-making. And there were some hard lessons. But she would be the first to say that getting there was half the fun. Here's how it happened.
Born in Ohio, Loney was the second of five children in an Irish Catholic family. Her father, who worked for U.S. Steel, was transferred to Pittsburgh when Mary Rose was seven. Her first exposure to the opportunities available in the field of aviation came in the form of an ad for stewardess training that she found in the back of one of her mother's fashion magazines.
"I cut that ad out and wrote a report on it for my second-grade Catholic school class, highlighting the fact that I wanted to experience travel and romance," Loney muses. "I don't think my teacher, Sister Raphael, appreciated it all that much. But I think if anything, adventure has always been a very big part of my spirit."
So big a part of her was her desire for adventure that it led her to go
west after graduating in 1973 from the University of Pittsburgh with a
bachelor's degree in sociology and philosophy.
"I had spent the preceding summer backpacking in Hawaii, and it was wonderful," she says. "So I wanted to return to the West right after graduation. I went to hike the Grand Canyon that summer and didn't want to leave." She stayed on to take her first job in aviation: selling air tours of the Grand Canyon.
"I worked for Grand Canyon Airlines staffing a ticket counter for $2.50 an hour," she says, noting that she actually lived in the Grand Canyon for two years. During that time, she made her first trip to Las Vegas; she moved here in 1976. But she didn't immediately pursue a career in aviation.
"I had worked my way through college as a grocery checker, so when I first came to Las Vegas, I took a job as a checker for Lucky Stores," she says, adding that the move was a significant one for several reasons. Most importantly, she was selected by Lucky Stores to enter their management training program.
"So at the tender age of 24, I became the first woman in Lucky's Nevada operation to go through that program," she says, adding that it resulted in her becoming what was called in those days "the fourth man" - closing night manager at a huge supermarket on Bonanza Road.
"I remember having to climb up on the metal railing that divides the entry and exit doors to lock the store at 10 o'clock," says the 5-foot, 2-inch Loney. "It was my first shot at management. Here I was at 24 managing a huge commercial operation with a unionized labor force and doing things that prepared me for what I do today."
In 1978, Loney took her first job in the public sector, a position created through the Comprehensive Employment Training Act; she was hired to train youths and disenfranchised adults how to seek jobs. But that same year a greater opportunity came her way - her first job at McCarran International Airport.
"I was hired as a $9,000-per-year administrative assistant in the business and finance office," she says, recalling that her first task was to draft a lease agreement for Air Cal. But set in the larger context of what was going on at McCarran at the time, Loney's humble beginnings there take on greater meaning.
"That was year we launched the McCarran 2000 project," she says. "The following year we went out and borrowed $300 million in the revenue bond market to start construction on the project. At the time, it was the largest airport revenue bond series ever issued. So it was definitely trailblazing. And there was risk involved; Las Vegas had a population of 200,000 at the time, and we were planning this very ambitious growth program for the airport."
In the spirit of the environment in which she worked, Loney herself decided to take a risk that would set the pace and tone of her career.
"I was working in the business and finance office, and there was a management analyst position opening that was to report to the director of aviation," she says. "Our director was poised to promote someone from another county department, but I felt I had been overlooked in the selection process. So I remember going to him and saying, 'I wish that you would consider me for this, and if you'll give me the opportunity, I'll be willing to do whatever it takes to enhance my skills and abilities to do the job.' And he gave me the chance. It was at that point that I made the commitment to seek my master's degree as well as professional accreditation."
Soon after, she enrolled in the master of public administration degree program at UNLV.
"It was a wonderful opportunity to pursue the discipline of public administration while working full time," she says, adding that the university's willingness to accommodate the schedules of working adults made all the difference. "I don't think I could have succeeded at either my job at McCarran or in the graduate program if I hadn't done both together. They complemented each other very well."
Simultaneously, she pursued professional accreditation.
"In our industry we have an accreditation that is tantamount to an accountant earning a CPA. It's called an AAE - an accredited airport executive," she says. "I ended up becoming the third woman in the United States to earn that accreditation. But first I completed my master's degree in December '83 and then my accreditation in January '84."
Throughout the course of her six years at McCarran, she worked her way up through the ranks, eventually gaining the post of planning services manager of the airport. In that capacity, she led the environmental studies that supported McCarran's development program.
"I established the first noise abatement program for the airport. I
also wrote the first comprehensive set of rules and regulations for
McCarran. All of those experiences have served me very well as I have
progressed in my career."
When the number two post - the director of day-to-day operations - at McCarran opened in 1984, Loney decided to go for it. But this time around, she didn't get the job.
"Once again, I went back to the director and said that I'd really like to be considered for the job. But up to that point in time, all of my skills were really focused on the business and planning side of the airport, not on day-to-day operations. And he said, 'I just don't think you're ready to take on this kind of responsibility at this time.' And in so many ways, he did me a favor, because that was then my incentive to look for other opportunities."
Not long after, she was selected as the top candidate for the post of assistant aviation director at Albuquerque International Airport.
"One of the interesting things about my step over to Albuquerque was that they had just adopted a master plan for the airport," she says. "And I had just come fresh from being part of the McCarran 2000 team here. So I looked at their master plan and said to the director, 'You can't do this! It's too short-sighted.' The plan called for ripping up the terminal building for two years for a net gain of three additional aircraft gates. So I convinced him to set aside that master plan and bring in the team that had done McCarran 2000."
That was a big risk for both of them, she reflects, considering that the change in plans required them to go before the Albuquerque City Council to say they wanted "to rethink" their master plan. Yet, they succeeded and were able to bring in the McCarran 2000 architectural team to work with a local firm on a new plan.
"We created the terminal that exists there today, and it's really a charming facility that exudes the ambiance of the Southwest but has a very functional layout," she says proudly.
It was also in Albuquerque that she learned one of her biggest professional lessons: Always have a backup plan.
"There was one memorable night there when I had been on the job only about six months," she recalls. "That night, our graveyard custodial staff decided to get drunk during their shift. And it wasn't just, 'Let's have a cocktail before we start.' It was, 'Let's have a big party.' It was an ugly scene. Employees had passed out. Others had even left in the middle of the night to bring in more provisions.
"Well, I got a call early the next morning about it. When I arrived, they were all pretty much sobering up to reality and admitted what they had done. So I boldly said right on the spot, 'All right, you're all fired!' Then, after they left, the terminal building manager said, 'That's great, Mary Rose! But who's going to polish the floors tonight?'
"I looked at him and said, 'Mario, you and I are going to do the floors tonight.' And, sure enough, I came in with him and ran all the floor scrubbers until we got the shifts moved around. That definitely taught me to always have a backup plan."
After two years on the job in Albuquerque, another opportunity, this time at a larger airport, presented itself. Loney was selected for the second-in-command post at San Jose International Airport, where she administered daily airside and landside activities at the fourth busiest airport in California.
One of her responsibilities was to reach an agreement with the airlines on financing a new terminal; after her work on the new terminal building in Albuquerque, as well as on the McCarran 2000 project, word was getting around that Loney was the person who could make a capital improvement project happen.
While in San Jose, she became increasingly involved in national issues in the aviation field, including government regulation, environmental compatibility, and airport financing. She was also beginning to travel in more influential circles, meeting important networking contacts from throughout the country.
After putting in three and a half years there, she was approached by a recruiter for then-recently elected Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was pulling together his new management team. He was looking for an airport management professional to serve as second in command at O'Hare running day-to-day operations. Loney quickly accepted the post that would be the first of her two stints there.
"Two weeks before I was scheduled to leave San Jose, the big San Francisco World Series earthquake hit," she says, noting that she was, as usual, on the job. "In fact, I was on the phone with my former boss from Albuquerque telling him about my new job in Chicago when the earthquake hit. The ceiling collapsed, and I dove under my desk. But I knew I needed to get out into the terminal to see what kind of damage we had sustained.
"It was just chaos, but we still had our windows intact. People were
running outside as I was heading back to my office to get my keys and
radio. Then one of the aftershocks hit, and I went down. I broke my arm,
but I didn't even know it," she says. "I worked all night. It wasn't until
about 24 hours later that I looked down at my arm and thought, 'Wow, this
really hurts.' I had been dropping things all night and kept thinking that
maybe I was a little more nervous than I had thought. I'm sure it was just
the adrenaline that kept me from recognizing it was broken. But we ended
up being the only airport in the Bay Area that was operational because San
Francisco and Oakland had sustained worse damage."
Despite her injury, Loney looks back on the incident as another lesson learned.
"The earthquake was an extremely valuable experience," she says. "In the airport industry, we practice a great deal for emergencies, but they're always our emergencies, whether they're aircraft crashes or acts of air piracy. We had never really practiced natural disasters. And when those hit, all the resources that you would normally depend on to be marshaled to your aid are all of a sudden being dispersed for everyone else's catastrophe. So it was an important lesson in resource planning and allocation."
It also strongly reinforced her decision to go to O'Hare.
"Yep, afterward my motto was, 'Chicago - my kinda town,'" she muses. But she is quick to add that her move to O'Hare was an important step in her career.
"That was probably the most remarkable step," she says. "I've loved every bit of my career, but that was a real giant step because I went from running the day-to-day operations of an airport that was handling about six million passengers a year to one with 60 million a year."
Almost immediately, she faced some O'Hare-sized challenges. To start, it was the most delay-plagued airport in the country at the time. It also had a considerable homeless population camping out in and around the terminal buildings. Additionally, the local media had recently reported substantial inadequacies in airport security.
During her three years in that position, she addressed each problem - along with many others - methodically and thoroughly. She formed and led a task force to examine and make recommendations about delay problems; she convinced the airlines to contribute to the financing of a homeless shelter for the airport; and she worked with consultants from Israel's major airline to help beef up security. All the while she had 14 line divisions reporting to her, including operations, security, parking, ground transportation, and facilities maintenance and construction.
But even with the ability to direct that diverse assortment of divisions, she realized that her background lacked one area of decision-making expertise: finance. So she left O'Hare in 1992 to become the deputy executive director and chief financial officer at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the second busiest airport in the world.
"I wanted to round out my skills," she says. "I wanted to position myself to be the number one at a major airport, and I knew I needed more experience to do that. I had started my career in the business and finance office at McCarran, but I was doing support work. I wasn't making the final decisions about the budgets. So, I went and became a Texan for 18 months."
Once again, Loney was presented with a unique set of challenges. She had just begun to negotiate the acquisition of homes to build an eighth runway at Dallas/Fort Worth when a different type of professional opportunity arose: She was approached by the Clinton administration about running the Federal Aviation Administration. She interviewed twice for the job with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena and was eventually asked to take the number two slot with the FAA.
"But just about at the same time, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell called me, saying they had heard about me and wanted to talk to me about running Philadelphia's airport. At first I said, 'Are you kidding? I was raised in Pennsylvania, and I'm not going back there,'" she laughs. "I had felt that Chicago was about as far east as I wanted to go again. But he said, 'At least come and talk to us.' And, as it turned out, it was the best career decision I have made. It just made more sense to me to be the number one in Philadelphia than to be the number two with the FAA."
But what was waiting for her in Philadelphia was no runway of roses; to say the least, Philadelphia International Airport had its share of problems. In a 1992 national survey of 34 major airports rated by passengers, Philadelphia received some of the lowest rankings possible in many areas, including speed of baggage delivery, cleanliness, convenience, and food quality and price. Employees' attitudes were poor, ground transportation signage was confusing, and the tired facilities were sorely in need of repair. The abundant problems of the airport were the favorite topics of everyone from cab drivers to the media. But Loney, in her inimitable way, welcomed the challenge.
"I had the opportunity to take an airport system that had largely been neglected and expand it and enhance it and really turn it into a diamond," she says, adding that within a year, even the Philadelphia media began to acknowledge she had made significant progress. By the time she left in 1996, she had directed a $500 million capital improvement program that included major terminal renovations, airfield rehabilitation, and construction of a new runway. She had also effected sweeping changes in food, beverage, and retail offerings, as well as employee attitudes toward customer service. Philadelphia's turnaround is still one of her proudest accomplishments.
"I probably would have stayed longer if Mayor Daley hadn't called me to come back to run O'Hare, Midway, and Meigs," she says a bit wistfully. "But how can you turn down an opportunity like the Chicago Airport System? The answer is you don't. You just don't. And I think in my heart of hearts, the Chicago job was the one I always wanted. It's the top of the mountain. O'Hare is the world's busiest airport. It's the ultimate challenge. That kind of challenge is very important to me."
She returned to Chicago in September 1996 to find that progress had been made on some of the issues she had worked on during her previous tenure there. But, she says, many of the same issues she had faced in all of her other airport positions - noise abatement, airport compatibility with surrounding environments, security, and safety - were still critical concerns for her at O'Hare and will remain so throughout the rest of her career.
Additionally, she must now direct two other smaller airports - Midway
Airport, which serves to relieve some of the commercial traffic that would
otherwise land at O'Hare, and Meigs Field, a smaller, centrally located
general aviation airport. Both have their share of difficulties. Midway,
which served 10 million passengers last year, is undergoing extensive
renovation of its 50-year-old terminal building, and it must remain fully
operational during construction. Meigs Field, which Loney calls "the
world's tiniest airport with some of the biggest challenges," has been the
site of two significant plane crashes in the last two years and faces
closure in 2002 when the property on which it sits will be converted back
to a lakefront park. Though both require her attention, there's only so
much to go around; she estimates she spends 60 per-cent of her time at
O'Hare and splits the rest between Midway and Meigs Field.
Despite a seeming lack of any available personal time, Loney maintains she has found balance in her life more now than ever. Though she prefers to keep her personal relationships private, she acknowledges that she was married once - back in her Las Vegas days - but got divorced as her career took flight. She now maintains a long-distance relationship with an East Coast commercial developer.
"We see each other on weekends," she says, "so it pretty much works out that I can remain focused during the week on my job, which is nice because, as you know, relationships require time, commitment, effort, and energy, too."
She also finds time to participate in the Chicago Network, an organization for the area's top professional women, and to serve - along with several other women from O'Hare - as a mentor for a Chicago-area group for 10-to-15-year-old girls.
"There are tremendous examples of women succeeding at Chicago O'Hare and Midway, whether it's a woman air traffic controller or a woman captain of a 747," she says proudly, adding that she has tried to give as many opportunities as possible to women on their way up.
"I think that it's important for women who have achieved success to widen the path for women who are coming up behind them by creating opportunities. I've appointed a woman as the chief financial officer for the Chicago Airport System. I have a woman serving as my deputy commissioner who oversees our real estate transactions and another woman who directs all of our contracts and leases. I've put women into other nontraditional positions, as well. My chief of day-to-day operations at Midway is also a woman."
Her advice to women seeking career advancement is quite simple.
"I think there is no substitute for being technically competent in whatever field you choose," she says. "That has to come first. So pursue that competence, whether it's through higher education or on-the-job training or both."
And don't be afraid to ask for an opportunity, she says, but be willing to back up that request with true commitment.
"I always advise young women to think of it this way: If your boss is willing to take a risk and make an investment in you, you must make that same commitment in return. And sure it's hard, but make that commitment, like you would to anything else, whether it's a commitment to a relationship or a commitment to changing a habit, such as dieting or quitting smoking. Just make that commitment and pursue it with as much passion and as much energy as you can muster. And if you can't muster the passion for it, then you are probably in the wrong field."
As for herself, Loney couldn't be more certain she chose the right one.
"Can you tell I've loved my life?" she asks. "I have had a lot of wonderful opportunities along the way, and I've tried to seize those opportunities. My only regret is that it's going by so fast."
