St. Louis’ longtime airport executive director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge says she will retire next August—saying she’s ready to take more enjoyment from life. “This is the perfect time, and I think I will have done most of the things I wanted to complete,” she says.
Appointed to run St. Louis Lambert International Airport in 2009 by then-Mayor Francis Slay, Hamm-Niebruegge recently celebrated an achievement she had been focused on since the beginning of her 15-year tenure: A nonstop flight to London, with British Airways bringing service to Heathrow beginning next April. That September announcement followed news that Lufthansa will expand the airport’s three-year-old nonstop service to Frankfurt, Germany to five days a week starting next June.
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Under Hamm-Niebruegge, the airport has also kicked off a massive terminal consolidation project that she expects should be at 60 percent of its design phase by the time she steps down. She says she is not worried about the project faltering in her absence.
“We have an incredible program management team and design team and construction management team on board,” she says. “A lot of things are in play, and things are moving along. That was a key piece for me to have a comfort level as well.”
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer, who will be tasked with choosing Hamm-Niebruegge’s replacement, says the city will conduct a national search. “For 15 years, Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge has led our airport with excellence, grace, and distinction. I want to thank her for her service to St. Louis,” Spencer said in a prepared statement. “Our airport and our region are much better off as a result of her leadership, and her work developing the plan to transform the airport has set the stage for our next chapter.”
At the time of her hire, Hamm-Niebruegge had been managing director for American Airlines’ St. Louis operations for seven years. She’d previously been manager of TWA’s St. Louis hub, and was able to build on strong relationships with the airlines even as she made major inroads with local business leaders.
“When I first took this job, the business community was really concerned about the airport, the lack of the hub, the lack of international exposure, just the lack of access to nonstop markets,” she says. “And so I met with them a lot in that first year, and they kept telling me that we had to get back on the international front. And the international front to them did not mean Cancun, right?”
The opportunity came as airlines began flying slightly smaller aircraft to Europe, with 256 or 230 seats instead of 400. “That really gave some opportunities for those European carriers to think about some of these medium hub markets,” she says. The door opened to Lufthansa when she was able to persuade the business community to put incentives on the table—and the success of that flight led to interest from British Airways.
“Getting that win along with the business community was huge,” she says. “It was just that next step of being able to say that the airport has come a long way since the challenges we faced after our de-hubbing. I think it was just a sigh of relief that now we’ve got two European flights, we’ve got two into the Canadian market, and then we’ve got multiple flights into the Caribbean, into Mexico, so we are getting back to where we have a true international footprint.”
Indeed, Greater St. Louis Inc. issued a statement praising Hamm-Niebruegge’s work. Lal Karsanbhai, president and CEO of Emerson and chair of the business group’s Airport Transformation Committee, said in a statement, “Our airport is the first thing many visitors see when they come to St. Louis and sets the tone for how they view our region. Rhonda has done a remarkable job leading the planning process for the single-terminal transformation that will give St. Louis the airport our community deserves and that will set the stage for our growth. We thank her for her commitment to St. Louis and wish her well in her next chapter.”
Hamm-Niebruegge also helped the airport recover after it suffered $25 million of damage from an EF4 tornado in 2011. She also guided it through a privatization push, which then-Mayor Lyda Krewson’s administration explored only to ultimately shut it down. (As an alderwoman, Spencer helped to lead the fight against it.)
Hamm-Niebruegge says she feels confident that the privatization idea is dead in St. Louis. “I think it was clear that it was not supported by the majority of the business community. It certainly isn’t supported by this administration, and the airlines, quite honestly, are not supportive of it either,” she says. “So when you take those factors into play, I don’t see that as something that would come back up.”
A mother of three and grandmother of five, Hamm-Niebruegge says turning 65 this past May made her think seriously about retirement. She originally thought about retiring this year, but wanted to get the design of the terminal consolidation farther along.
But she was not willing to wait until the massive construction project was done—or even ready to break ground.
“I look at all the things that I want to be able to do while I’m healthy, and we’ve got five grandkids, one on the way coming in January, and there’s just a lot of things I want to do,” she says. “And travel!”
Speaking to her children last night before today’s big announcement, Hamm-Niebruegge says they teased her about the stress she always feels when it snows.
“They’re like, Mom, will you finally get the chance to enjoy the snow with us? Because when you see snow, you’re like, Oh my God no, because you’re worried then about the operation,” she says. “And I’m like, I’m gonna sit by my fireplace and beg for snow! I’m just going to enjoy a glass of wine or cup of coffee and look at the snow.”
