From Curb to Gate Tucson International Airport Offers Top Safety, Sense of Place

By Jay Gonzales

With 3.4 million passengers passing through Tucson International Airport in 2022, that was a lot of heartbeats, stomachs to feed and hands that needed washing for the Tucson Airport Authority staff whose focus is on the customer experience.

TAA Fire Chief Tom Tucker has a simple approach when he’s asked how it feels to put his head on his pillow at night knowing the tremendous responsibility the TAA has to ensure a safe, secure customer experience for so many.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown, right?” Tucker said. “It’s one of those things where you must be engaged all the time. You have to focus and be proactive and look down the road.”

He makes it sound so simple, but it’s not.

By Federal Aviation Administration regulations, the full-scale fire department, including special training and apparatus for aircraft firefighting at the airport, or TUS, is there to serve over 138,000 aircraft operations and nearly 3.4 million passengers that come and go each year.

“What we are here for is to provide a service to those aircraft. In the event of an aircraft fire, incident, or accident, we have statutory and regulatory requirements to provide that service and that’s our singular focus,” Tucker said. “Luckily, the airport has adopted a model where they want to take an all-hazards approach. They want that overarching response to anything, and they’ve funded it, they’ve supported it, and that’s why we’re successful.”

Likewise, the TAA police department has a dual approach to its duties. It is responsible for law enforcement and the security of the airport and every imaginable situation that can arise. Yet they try to fulfill duties with a customer service approach, said TAA Police Chief Scott Bader.

It’s a “welcome wagon” with tight security starting at the front of the airport and working back through the secure areas.

“I look at qualified individuals who have some sort of hospitality or customer service background,” Bader said of the department’s hiring practices. “I think it’s imperative in our job. The continued on page 98 >>> continued from page 97 public is our customer, and we need to understand that we need to treat everybody with the same level of service. I tell my team that they need to treat everybody, regardless of who they are, like they would treat their own mother.”

Along the way, everyone at TUS with a customer service responsibility must be ready for anything, even a global pandemic that continues to impact how the airport operates, with increased efforts to ensure passengers feel safe.

TAA also continues to maintain its highly regarded Global Biorisk Advisory Council STAR Accreditation for sanitizing protocols and cleaning practices. Adam Kretschmer, TAA director of maintenance and custodial services, said the effort to make travelers feel safe and sanitary, and more importantly BE safe and sanitary, is never ending.

Kretschmer said TUS was one of the first airports in the world to get the Global Biorisk Advisory Council STAR Accreditation after the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

“It’s an annual certification that we have to go through that says that we have a staff, we have the equipment, we have the training programs, to make sure that when a customer comes into our airport that they know that it is disinfected, that it is clean,” Kretschmer said. “And that’s no small feat.”

And in the end, it gives travelers the peace of mind they’re in a safe and secure environment and allows them to enjoy the fun stuff the airport offers–the art displays, the food, the shops and amenities.

“I think one of the things that the TAA prides itself on is the curb-to-gate experience,” said Jessie Allen, director of marketing and strategic communications.

TUS made it a point to engage local artists and food vendors at the airport to create a “sense of place” for those who live here and for those arriving from points abroad.

“I think it’s ingrained in us, this sense of place, that we want people to know they’re in Tucson,” Allen said. “We’re such a diverse community with open arms. It’s all about a sense of Tucson and being one big family.”