Boston Sunday Globe -- Northwest Weekly
February 24, 2002

HANSCOM DIRECTOR GLIDES ABOVE AIRFIELD POLITICS

by Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

BEDFORD - Outside the Civil Air Terminal at Hanscom Field, three pickets stand in the cold, handing out fliers opposing commercial aviation here. They have been conspicuous at the airfield since Shuttle America began its turboprop service in September 1999.

In her third-floor office in the terminal, airport director Barbara Patzner is seated behind her desk. A bank of windows gives her sweeping views of planes taking off and landing at New England's largest general aviation airport. In the controversy surrounding Shuttle America's presence at Hanscom, and other carriers' abortive attempts to begin operations, Patzner has removed herself from the fray. Instead, spokesmen for her employer, the Massachusetts Port Authority, field questions from the media about commercial aviation operations.

Yet some municipal officials in the region, who have been closely monitoring activities at Hanscom for the last 2 1/2 years, say that Patzner appears to be capable and professional and could take a stronger role.

Patzner, who reports to Thomas J. Kinton Jr., Massport's acting executive director and director of aviation, said she prefers to take an encompassing view of things in her role as chief executive of a $4 million-a-year business.

Last year, there were 205,437 operations at Hanscom, including civilian, commercial, corporate, and military flights. In 2000, there were 212,371 operations.

"I like best the variety of things I get into, from interacting with tenants and pilots to the Air Force base next door and the FAA," she said during an interview early last week.

Kinton said, "Her ability to balance the needs of some very diverse constituencies is a real asset for Massport and the companies and individuals who use Hanscom."

Although Hanscom reported operating surpluses of $187,000 and $36,000 in 2000 and 2001, for the first time in a number of years the financial picture will be bleaker this fiscal year, Patzner said, because of tougher security measures put in place following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Overtime paid to security personnel probably will amount to $300,000 for the fiscal year ending June 30, she said.

Her staff has been reduced from 20 to 16 because of declining business at Boston's Logan International Airport, which Massport also owns and operates.

New revenue sources at Hanscom could come from charging $6 a day for parking, which is now free, and from increasing fees on aircraft fuel from 9 to 11 cents a gallon, Patzner said. "Doing those two things would give us about $625,000 a year."

Challenges and change, she said, have always been on her agenda since taking over the helm of Hanscom in 1987.

And she took a circuitous route to get here.

A native of Wisconsin, where she grew up on a dairy farm, Patzner came into the aviation management field serendipitously. "An older sister who was living in New York City sent me an airline ticket so I could visit her. Not long after that, I figured that if I got an airline job, I could travel," said Patzner, who graduated from Fordham University with a political science degree.

In the early 1970s, she began her career as a secretary for Trans World Airlines in New York. But she quickly moved into customer service work and, in 1981, managed NY Air's operations at Newark (N.J.) Airport. "I was the first female manager at the airport," she said.

A year later, NY Air transferred her to Logan, where she subsequently became general manager for Continental Airlines. Then, in 1987, she accepted the director's job at Hanscom, which was about to get its first taste of commercial aviation, with Mohawk Air, from 1989 to 1991.

"There was no [community] opposition to Mohawk because they only flew aircraft with 19 seats" to Newark, Islip, N.Y., and Rome, N.Y., Patzner said. But when Continental Express proposed serving Newark from Hanscom in 1990, activists from Concord, Bedford, Lincoln, and Lexington began fighting expanded commercial service at Hanscom, she said.

After Continental withdrew its plans later that year, "the communities felt they had won, and we weren't approached by another carrier for a while," she said. The next serious, and successful, bid was by Shuttle America in 1999.

Patzner tries to distance herself from the brouhaha over Shuttle America, which now operates as US Airways Express.

"We're operating the airport within the parameters of our master plan," she said, citing limits on the size of commercial carriers' planes (fewer than 60 seats) and daily operations (48). Massport is now updating its Environmental Status Planning Report on Hanscom, which will examine the effect of more than 48 daily commercial flights at the airfield.

Although Patzner is not an out-front Massport official in the debate over commercial service at Hanscom, the Arlington resident is respected, said Arthur Fulman, a former Concord selectman, and Sheldon Moll, chairman of the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission and a Bedford selectman.

"Barbara [Patzner] is a consummate professional who, from an operational standpoint, handles things well. And she tries not to get into the politics of commercial service at Hanscom," said Fulman, who was chairman of the Hanscom Area Towns Committee when Shuttle America began its operations in 1999. The committee is made up of officials from the four communities.

"Barbara is a congenial person who leaves it to others at Massport to deal with us," Moll said. "I've never heard anyone ask about her background or question it."

Patzner is also a private person who parries a question about her age with laughter. "Oh, you don't need to know that," she said.

Her off-the-job interests center around skiing and being a mentor to a 17-year-old girl who's enrolled in a program at Germaine Lawrence, a nonprofit agency that serves youngsters with emotional problems. It has residences in Boston and Arlington.

As for her Hanscom tenure, Patzner said she has no plans to give up the post as long as there "are challenges and things don't become boring."

© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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