Rick Piccolo has seen it all. From starting his career as a janitor at Buffalo Niagara International Airport in 1970 to coming to Sarasota as the CEO of Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport in 1995, Piccolo’s 55-year tenure in the airline industry has seen him work in every facet of aviation. Piccolo will officially retire as CEO on November 30, 2025, having shepherded SRQ Airport from the doldrums of financial debt in 1995 to the fastest growing airport in the country today. In light of his departure, Piccolo sat down with SRQ Magazine to talk about what leading SRQ Airport has meant to him.

CAN SHARE WITH US THE STATE OF THE SRQ AIRPORT WHEN YOU CAME INTO THE POSITION? RICK PICCOLO  When I first came into the role 30 years ago, actually, the airport was doing well, but the growth that it had planned on and forecast at the time was not happening. Part of that was due to the market conditions at the time—the first decade of deregulation had already occurred and you had a lot of airlines emerging—new startups that would start and go bankrupt. As the industry started to consolidate some of those airlines the airport lost, some of those carriers and the competition from Tampa International Airport and Fort Myers drew a lot of our passenger traffic away. We were bleeding around two thirds of the air traffic here to Tampa International. The state hadn’t experienced the growth it has in the last few years and the interstate made it only about an hour trip to Tampa International, which is at least a couple hour drive today. I often tell people, however, the greatest growth we had was from 2018 until now when our passenger traffic grew 300%. I’ve never seen anything close to it in my entire career. It was really when COVID hit. All of the business flying was ending and airlines started to look for leisure destinations to go to and people started to look for places where they could socially distance and enjoy outdoor activities. Of course, we have beautiful beaches, great boating, fishing and wonderful golf courses to name a few things about the area. Additionally Governor DeSantis kept the state open so you could go to a restaurant or go to an event. As the airlines increased their service, the more people came and the more the area started to grow, not just from tourism but from people moving here as well.

WHAT CHANGES WERE INSTITUTED INITIALLY INTO YOUR TERM THAT MADE POSITIVE GROWTH POSSIBLE? When I came here in 1995, SRQ was one of only two commercial airports in the country whose board was directly elected by the populace. Now there are lots of airports  that are run by counties and cities, but the Governing Board’s only issue is not just the airport. County and city commissions have many other issues to deal with besides running an airport. What ended up happening, in many cases, is that people would run for the airport board that had an ax to grind with the board. While it didn’t take up the majority of the board, it did have a sizable minority and you ended up with a lot of controversy. The Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority Board was known as the most difficult board in the industry to deal with from a management standpoint.

The state legislature at the time, led by Senate President John McKay, put legislation through that would change the board from elected to appointed by the governor, but only if it was approved by referendum in both counties. It’s really unusual for people to give up their right to vote on something, but it passed by an overwhelming margin in both counties, because that’s how dysfunctional the board was and how much dysfunctional press they would get.  So it changed to a board that was appointed by the governor and it could only be business people, politicians could not be on the board. 

WHAT DID THAT MEAN FOR THE GROWTH OF THE AIRPORT? The airport is the closest thing to private industry in government. We don’t have any taxing power and our entire budget, both our operating budget and the amount of money we put towards capital programs, has to come from our business revenue.  With having business people on the board, they started to understand the entrepreneurial nature of the airport and from a management standpoint, that allowed us to go forward with things not based on some political philosophy, but based upon the business case for what we presented. As we presented good business cases and were doing things successfully, then the board would have more and more of a faith in the staff and in the leadership and we could do more things. That’s how it evolved into being more successful over time and even though we were losing traffic for a while, we were able to continue to be a well run organization financially. By 2014 we retired all the debt from the terminal they built in 1989, about $150 million worth, and to this day are still one of the few airports that is debt free.

WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES OF MAINTAINING THAT INTENSE PERIOD OF GROWTH FROM 2018 UNTIL NOW? I’ve seen airports that might grow at 10% a year, but I’ve never been at a place or seen any airport that grew the way we did in that very short period of 300% over four years. It just was explosive. There was no real playbook on how you deal with that and our efforts were to scurry to accommodate that growth. I try to tell people, imagine if vehicle traffic in your community grew at 300% in a five year period—no matter how much money Uncle Sam is willing to give you to build roads and highways, you can’t build it fast enough. Part of that challenge was maintaining the character of the airport. We were always called the “boutique-y” airport and were known for our cleanliness as well. The question was, as you grow this quickly, how do you maintain that boutique feel? 

TERMINAL A OPENED THIS JANUARY AND IS EVIDENCE OF THAT EXTREME PASSENGER GROWTH. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE PROCESS OF BUILDING IT? Terminal A is a five-day terminal that Allegiant Airlines operates out of. It’s a ground boarding terminal, it doesn’t have jet bridges. People ask, “Well, why did you build it that way instead of using jet bridges?” I tell them, when we were growing so fast, the first thing I presented to the board was a PowerPoint on what we wanted to do. The first slide was blank except for a few words: “Time is our enemy.” We were growing so fast that if we didn’t do something to accommodate it, airlines would either leave us or quit adding service and we would not be able to take advantage of this opportunity. We built a ground based terminal because one, it saved about $50 million since we didn’t have to build a two story building and two, it cut a year off of construction time. Otherwise we’d still be working on that project until January of next year and probably would have missed this window of opportunity. 

LOOKING BACK AT YOUR 30-YEAR TENURE AT SRQ AIRPORT, WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF? One of the things I had the great pleasure of doing, in addition to working with the airport itself, was my involvement with the industry. I was chairman of Airports Council International, a trade association that represents most of the airports in the world. I was first elected chairman of Airports Council International North America, but eventually was on the World Board and served as chairman of that board for two years. I was on the World Board for 16 years and got to meet people from all over the world that run airports and see the world. I’ve been to 48 countries and from experiencing different cultures and working with colleagues from around the world, I was able to see that people are pretty much the same everywhere, which was incredibly gratifying and satisfying. When I think back to starting my career as a janitor, I never envisioned that I would run an airport, let alone chair an organization that runs airports around the world. From a local standpoint, I’m just pleased to see the growth of the airport. I’m proud of the efforts that we’ve made on the education front—on our land we’ll have a school where kids can start in kindergarten, go through high school and then go to a technical school for the AMP (Aviation Maintenance Professional) school and never have to leave airport property to do it. So we’re creating an opportunity for our children and grandchildren, especially the type of school we have here with disadvantaged children, which is particularly meaningful.