Boeing Field Director John Parrott shares $400M plans for airport

Boeing Field has been hurting during the pandemic, but not as much as bigger rivals statewide because it’s much less dependent on commercial airlines, airport director John Parrott says.

Still, the pandemic has triggered temporary adjustments for the airport, its workers and its tenants, but the bigger, brighter picture is causing the King County International Airport to be laser-focused on big infrastructure modernization projects — its $300 million efforts and a tenant’s $100 million project — as it refines long-term plans.

Parrott, Boeing Field boss for over a year after managing Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport in Alaska, discussed that strategy with the Business Journal during a recent interview.

How have things been for Boeing Field during the pandemic? It’s a pretty stable operation. Kenmore Air is down quite a bit. Other tenants are affected as well, but not all. Half our employees must be at the airport — operations people, firefighters and police. The other half of our workers, the engineering group, finance and administration people like me, we don’t have to touch stuff so we’re all working remotely.

Air cargo has always been a big part of your business. What’s new there? The air cargo piece has been steady. UPS, which has a significant operation here, operated on a month to month lease here for the past 25 years. Now, they finally decided they needed to upgrade and update their facility and make it more efficient. They’re looking for a 20-year lease, with possibility of a couple of (5-year) extensions. It is a very significant investment. Slightly north of $100 million.

Where is that project at? It’s before King County’s budget committee. In all likelihood it will accommodate, although probably not cause, increased activity at the airport and it will tie up a significant chunk of airport property for a number of years. Because we are so constrained on property, that was something that the council had some concerns about, so we’ll talk some more about it.

You’ve had a win on the electric aviation front. The Washington Department of Transportation has picked Boeing Field as one of six beta sites for electric airplane tests across the state. We’ll work with the industry to see what airports need to do to accommodate them. We’re talking about electrification of common fixed-wing airplanes like Caravans, but there’s also electrification of urban air mobility air taxis, either piloted or autonomous drone-type taxicabs. Those will require a lot of electricity that, quite frankly, no airport is currently equipped to provide.

How will you manage? As industry develops and discovers what they need in the form of electricity, airports will have to develop right along at the same time. You can’t fly in and out of airports without fuel. Electricity is just a different kind of fuel. We must have the infrastructure to provide what they need, but they don’t know exactly what they need. There’s going to be a lot of disruption in the aviation industry, but there always has been.

What about your own infrastructure modernization? Unlike some airports, we don’t need to expand the terminal because we’re not a passenger-centric operation. Or build another runway. We only have 600 acres.

You still have plans, right? We’re embarking on a fairly aggressive journey to be world class by 2030. It’s a great airport, but parts of it are old. We were doing some work a couple of months ago and found a valve on a water line that was stamped 1947. Not surprisingly, the valve didn’t work. We have systems that we need to put significant money into to update and upgrade – water, electricity, storm water capacity. Both runways will need to be resurfaced within 10 years. It’s a significant undertaking. At the end of it, we won’t be gold plated, but we’ll be an airport where people can operate safety, effectively and efficiently. That’s probably close to $300 million worth of work.

Will you apply for the federal government’s latest relief funds? We would certainly welcome money from this new grant process, but we’re not counting on it. There are a lot of airports, but we’re hopeful we’ll get some of it.

Since you arrived, Boeing Field seems more attentive about nearby residents’ noise complaints. It’s a bit because of my past experience. At my previous airport, I had a noise program person. Somebody called in a noise complaint, he’d talk to them and say, “I’ll have to get back to you because I have to research what airplane it was, who it was and what they were doing.” There would often be a lot of back-and-forth discussion about the airplane’s altitude and its noise. You’re arguing, in some cases, opinions against facts, but that discussion doesn’t go anywhere. What proved useful is an app program that allows people to go online and look for themselves and say that’s the airplane flying over my house, that’s the altitude it’s at. It doesn’t make the noise any less, but it puts them in control.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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About John Parrott Director, King County International Airport – Boeing Field (appointed January 2019)