The big picture
City Council members heard updates on Austin-Bergstrom International Airport's operations July 30 as part of their fiscal year 2024-25 budget review.
While ABIA has seen its staffing levels improve over the past year, nearly one in five Aviation Department positions sat unfilled as of this summer.
Airport vacancies fell from more than 35% in July 2023—the highest of any city department at that time—to 19.6% by late June 2024. This summer's rate was still the second highest in the city and more than double the overall civilian vacancy rate.
"I'm very concerned about a 19% vacancy rate at our airport, especially in this crucial period that we're in with the airport expansion program," said council member Vanessa Fuentes, whose council district includes ABIA.
City Council most recently awarded nearly $200 million in contracts for several airport improvement projects in July. City officials will consider several more contracts for projects totaling more than $2.16 billion, including a new midfield terminal and underground passenger tunnel, in August and September.
Zooming in
City staff members said a one-time retention stipend included in last year's budget process helped keep some employees on hand in recent months. Aviation CFO Rajeev Thomas reported the airport's turnover rate fell from nearly 4% in 2022 to just over 2% year to date.
However, that extra pay is not included in Austin's proposed FY 2024-25 spending plan. Instead, separate pay hikes based on a new market study have been laid out but wouldn't apply for every airport staffer.
Thomas said ABIA still faces challenges with "hard-to-fill" roles, such as engineers, technicians, electricians and carpenters—with many now being filled with more expensive contract workers—who are needed both for 24/7 operations and the years of major infrastructure updates.
"When you go into this kind of expansion program with a very high vacancy rate and your ability to staff and cover all those areas that we need to cover—the gates, all the surface area that we need to cover at the terminal and the new gates—I mean, that is concerning," he said. "It is something we have to fix. Otherwise, having the facilities without having the personnel, that’s not a good recipe."
Thomas also said ABIA hasn't been successful at drawing new hires from other airport facilities due to pay differences and the local cost of living. He added that staffing shortfalls could become even more pressing as the airport's overall footprint more than triples through expansion.
The outlook
Council member Alison Alter noted the staffing trend sounded similar to difficulties Austin previously faced with other departments, including its 911 call center, which experienced years of high vacancy before gradually staffing up.
She also said a strategy of setting pay based on median market levels may not be the most effective and asked city management to take a closer look at compensation policies, potentially with more support from ABIA's airlines.
"Getting to work on this Journey [with AUS] project, this major, major expansion should be the lifetime project for folks in this field," she said. "If we can't attract them to come here, we really do need to look at the pay."
City Manager T.C. Broadnax said he'll be working with the city human resources and compensation teams on the city's approach to pay and hiring at the airport. An update on the issue could come in the next few weeks.
“In theory, you get what you pay for," he said. "I know it is very competitive. I know the airlines ... are quite sensitive ... around the cost of their overall impacts on them and ticket prices, particularly with this large expansion. I’ve heard from a few of them directly. But, you can’t have a high-functioning operation if you don’t have the people.”
