Gale’s FLL Tenure

BY ANDREW TELLIJOHN

Mark Gale started his aviation career as an intern at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) in 1985, working his way up to the CEO role, which he held for seven years.

After promising his wife a second act that included warmer winters, in 2016 he took on the role of CEO at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport (FLL) during a time when its passenger counts were growing dramatically, and its facilities were all undergoing renewals.

He’s been a long-time player on the national aviation scene, active in both

America (ACI-NA) and the American

(AAAE), and as a tireless advocate for the advancement of women and minorities throughout the industry.

For his efforts, Gale has been named AXN’s Director of the Year in the large airports division.

Left: Mark Gale, AXN Director of the Year in the large airports division, took on the role of CEO at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport as a second career after “retiring” from Philadelphia International Airport.

While Gale attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and had a pretty good sense he wanted to work in aviation, his first experience was humbling. He took a job right out of high school with Altair Airlines and went through several weeks of training before receiving a call one evening saying he didn’t need to report to work the next day.

It was through no fault of his own, however. The airline had folded and everyone lost their jobs overnight.

A while later, he discovered an airport management internship at PHL, his hometown airport growing up. He applied for the work-study job but initially worried it, too, wouldn’t work out.

“My first three weeks as an intern I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life,” he says. “After the first three weeks, something changed. I don’t know what it was, but I started to really enjoy it. And then by the end of my first internship there I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

He did a second internship and after graduating from Embry-Riddle was hired permanently as a management trainee. “I worked hard and gave them pretty much all I had,” he says. “I was rewarded with numerous promotions and opportunities and had good teachers along the way.”

Broward County Commissioner Bertha Henry, who organized the search that resulted in Gale’s hire, met with him at PHL and followed him around for a day, impressed with his willingness to pick up trash off the floor or do other tasks some might consider menial, and amazed at how comfortable everyone from airport wayfinders to concessions partners felt approaching him, addressing him by his first name, to discuss problems or share a story.

“He came up through the ranks,” Henry says of Gale’s ascension at PHL. “I think some of that rubs off on him in terms of how he interacts with people.”

Henry knew after that visit that Gale was her recommendation for the job at FLL. Thus, in 2016 he took on the new role. FLL had just completed a billion-dollar runway addition and was heading into a significant period of terminal modernization and development.

“A lot of the roadmap had been placed out there, some design work was done,” Gale says. “Airlines had signed on to some of this.”

The first project he oversaw was the $200 million addition of Concourse A. FLL partnered with Southwest Airlines on that project, which opened in July 2017. The 300,000-square-foot facility added five swing gates that can accommodate either international or domestic flights and several concessions options to Terminal 1.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly isn’t involved with the day-to-day details of such projects, but he has met Gale several times. He and his airport affairs team have found him to be a straight shooter and a good partner.

Above: Broward County Aviation Department employees celebrate being awarded with the 2019 Salute to Business Transportation Award from the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.

Right: FLL had just completed a billiondollar runway addition when Gale joined, and he in turn is overseeing a significant period of terminal modernization and development.

Directors prove their mettle during large capital projects, Kelly says, and Gale made it happen in a way that worked for both parties.

“It’s better to have a partnership approach moving through these,” Kelly says. “It was a big project. It was a big deal for us to launch international service for the first time out of Fort Lauderdale. The whole launch was dependent on the success of that project and he brought it home.”

That was followed closely thereafter by an overhaul of Terminal 2, in tandem with Delta Air Lines, that included a new Sky Club on the mezzanine level for the airline. It also improved gate areas and restrooms and raised the ceilings with a new barrelshaped roof.

“We can actually look down into the concourse, but you also look right out the window on to the airfield,” Gale says. “We’re finishing that up right now.”

At the same time, in partnership with JetBlue Airways, FLL is finishing up a modernization and expansion program in Terminal 3 that adds new restaurants, restrooms, ticket counters, terrazzo floors and some enhancements “to get rid of some of the 1980s look and feel,” Gale says. “It was long overdue for a renovation.”

Finally, FLL has nearly completed a $672 million, multi-year, multi-phase overhaul of its Terminal 4. The project started with the addition of Concourse G West, which added some gates and 30,000 square feet of concessions, which opened in 2015. The next phase added several more gates as part of Concourse G East in December 2017.

The central corridor connecting each side of the concourse opened in October 2019. That involved tearing down Concourse H and replacing it with the new center portion of Concourse G. The airport’s administration offices moved into the upper level of the corridor building in late 2020.

Much of the work has been brought on as a result of growth. The projects have been done under the auspices of FLL’s previous master plan. It’s been necessary because, while FLL has seen passenger growth through most of the 21st century, it accelerated between 2013, when about 23 million passengers traversed the airport, and 2019, when traffic approached 37 million passengers.

“So, as that was occurring over the last five or six years, we kept on revisiting the master plan to identify what this airport really needs to look like going forward into the future,” Gale says.

Right: Gale has been involved with key industry organizations, including ACI-NA and AAAE, throughout much of his extensive career.

FLL has solicitations on the street for another $100 million worth of projects that will connect Terminals 1 and 2 and Terminals 2 and 3 so all four of the airport’s terminals will be accessible behind security.

“We’re going to take on the connector project ourselves,” he says.

The airport is also partnering, again, with JetBlue on planning for a new, five-gate, $306 million Terminal 5 that the airport views as a bridge between the old master plan and a new one, envisioned in tandem with Ricondo & Associates, that will guide its plans for the rest of Gale’s tenure and beyond.

Terminal 5 cannot be expanded due to land constraints, but those additional five gates are necessary to mitigate the loss of existing gates during construction on projects planned down the line.

A small amount of space near that new terminal was set aside for a possible non-aeronautical revenue-based project. Such projects have long been important to airports, but they may be increasingly vital looking forward as airports review the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

“If we learned anything, we really need to take a look at the revenue portfolios of airports,” Gale says. “If it were not for these huge bailouts from the federal government, we would be looking at a very different landscape in the future. I would be remiss in doing my job if I didn’t look at our financial portfolios in a little bit different way as we go forward, to see if there are other ways of investing and bringing money into the fold.”

As part of its new plan, FLL also is working with other agencies in the community, like Port Everglades, to make sure travelers embarking on or finishing cruises in the city get the service they need.

“Some would say ‘wouldn’t it be great if there were some kind of automated connection between the airport and the seaport,’” Gale says. “That was actually looked at about 15 years ago or more, it just never came to fruition. It became a focal point of our master plan – how do we make this happen to be able to provide an experience coming through our airport or through our seaport like no other in the world?”

When not managing airport affairs at FLL, Gale currently is first vice chair of AAAE. He’ll take on the role of chairman in mid-2022 from Larry Krauter, CEO at Spokane International Airport (GEG).

Krauter was at Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE) when he first met Gale. They were on similar career tracks and they would regularly talk while Gale was in operations at PHL. They often compared notes on regional capacity, weather, regionalization and other aspects of airport management. Krauter appreciated Gale’s accessibility.

“Even though he worked at a larger facility than I did, he never was too busy to take a call or respond to an email or text,” Krauter says.

Krauter also has been impressed with Gale’s measured, calm approach and the way he works with people. “He has a very caring personality,” Krauter says. “Our jobs require us at times to be pretty tough, but I don’t think you could be successful at the CEO level if you didn’t truly care about people.”

Gale has also been on the executive team with ACI-NA. He chaired the Large Hub Airport Committee for several years and is in a second term on the U.S. Policy Council.

“The main reason I do it is to be with my colleagues, for my colleagues, to be able to do things that advance our industry,” he says. “It’s something that I firmly believe in.”

He’s also involved in several local and national civic and community organizations. He served several years on the board of the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO), which attempts to level the playing field and maximize participation in the transportation industry for minority individuals, businesses and communities of color.

Gale is married to a woman from Jamaica. He has family members who are people of color. He’s currently reviewing historically black universities and colleges with his 15-year-old grandson to find the best fit for him. So, while he sees it as the right thing to do for the airport and the industry, it also is an issue he takes quite seriously personally.

“I don’t view my family as people of color, they’re my family,” he says. “But, at the same time, being that they are my family, and over the course of time, seeing what I consider to be discrimination and biases against minorities, against people of color, against women, has always bothered me.”

Todd Hauptli, president and CEO of the AAAE, has noticed Gale’s commitment to diversity and to the industry going back decades.

“It’s something that matters a lot to him,” Hauptli says. It’s very personal to him and he’s made it a priority at the airport and all of the organizations that he serves in.”

Hauptli also called Gale “unflappable” and someone he’d want to be around in times of trouble. Hauptli said Gale calmly led the airport’s handling of a live shooter incident in 2017 and a bomb threat in the fall of 2021.

“He’s just very calm in a storm,” Hauptli says. “He’s somebody that is such a solid pro.”