Even without Miguel Southwell, Atlanta’s efforts to woo new international flights will continue to accelerate, Mayor Kasim Reed said in a news conference Monday morning.
“We’re speeding up,” the mayor said in response to a question from Global Atlanta.
Mr. Southwell, a Caribbean island native who championed adding international routes as a means for attracting foreign investment, was fired from his post as aviation general manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Friday after helping bring two new carriers to the city.
Mr. Reed spent last Monday and Tuesday, respectively, welcoming Turkish Airlines, which launched its inaugural flight from Istanbul Monday, and Qatar Airways, which will start service to Doha on June 1.
“I was there all night,” he said of the Turkish event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Midtown, where he sat next to Coca-Cola Co.’s Turkish-American CEO and chairman, Muhtar Kent.
Ultimately, the mayor wanted to show Atlanta’s unambiguous stance on international connectivity, which he hopes will one day surpass New York’s.
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“I’m trying to send a message: You’re either in the international game or you’re out.”
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“I’m trying to send a message: You’re either in the international game or you’re out.”
He added that Candace Byrd, his chief of staff, hasn’t received enough credit for her role in bringing the Turkish Airlines flight to Atlanta.
“The person that got on the plane and actually went to Turkey and met with the Turkish government and Turkish airport officials is on your left,” he said, referencing Ms. Byrd’s position near the reporter. “Nobody ever talks about her though.”
The mayor’s decision to attend the Qatar Airways dinner at the Fox Theatre was met with protests — both by activists on the street decrying the airline’s labor practices, human rights record and treatment of women, and by the executive team at Delta Air Lines Inc., which is engaged in a bitter feud with Qatar.
Delta says Qatar receives government subsidies that help it compete unfairly on international routes, to the detriment of American airlines and their workers. Qatar executives deny the allegations and says Delta is bitter because its service is inferior.
Mr. Reed said he turned down invitations to some Qatar events but felt that he couldn’t completely snub a major carrier investing in Atlanta.
“You can’t send two messages. You can’t send the message of welcoming and openness the night before Turkish Airlines and then not participate in any way at Qatar. My friends at Delta did express their frustration, and I did express my reason for attending their event, and I think that we left on very good terms.”
He said he woke up this morning to Twitter messages calling him out for supposedly being against women because he supported the Qatar flight. But he said the airport and the city must acknowledge that cultural practices around the world are different.
Mr. Southwell’s firing was the subject of much discussion at the news briefing, as was the dismissal of Department of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management Commissioner Jo Ann Macrina.
Mr. Reed said he preferred to focus on convincing citizens that their interim replacements leave these important departments in good hands, but he did come around to saying that the long security lines at the airport were at least one of the reasons behind Mr. Southwell’s firing, which he attributed to a “layering” of reasons.
The airport will “back to basics” on customer service, improving the cleanliness of the property and showing the public — along with airline partners — that it’s doing everything in its power to reduce wait times at security lines that are currently under the jurisdiction of the Transportation Security Administration.
The mayor hinted that Mr. Southwell was not doing enough to lobby federal officials for more resources. Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security, for instance, is a Morehouse College graduate, and Mr. Reed said he would approach Mr. Johnson to make sure Morehouse’s hometown is getting its due. This is part of the mayor’s pledge to put “skin in the game” to make sure Hartsfield-Jackson is treated by Homeland, which runs TSA, as what it is: the busiest airport in the world, he said.
He said he wasn’t asking airport leaders for a miracle. He understood that they were dealing with record passenger volumes surpassing 100 million for the first time ever last year. But his own experiences at the airport — from a female staffer yelling at travelers about where the line had moved, to an older woman telling him lines had earlier extended out to the curb — validated that something different had to be done.
And his conversations with airport experts revealed that 14 percent in demand this year shouldn’t have caused a bottleneck that made Atlanta the “poster child” for inconvenient travel on news outlets such as George Stephanopoulos’ “This Week.”
“That’s not something that can stand, because our airport is the most significant economic generator in the state,” Mr. Reed said.
He said he had explored how other airports in San Francisco and elsewhere have privatized security functions, reducing their wait times. Atlanta is not ruling that out, he said, noting that the new airport team will have a “laser-like” focus on the customer experience.
The airport is also considering shuttling passenger from the domestic terminal to the international terminal, where wait times are generally much shorter.
“We’re exploring that right now,” Mr. Reed said. “My issue is I don’t think we should have had to get to the point where we are to be exploring those possibilities.”
Roosevelt Council, the former CFO of the City of Atlanta and current deputy general manager at the airport, will become its acting general manager.
William Johnson, former head of the Department of Transportation for the City of Baltimore, has joined Atlanta as the deputy chief operating officer. He will serve as interim head of the watershed management department.
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