CEOs You Should Know: Tory Richardson CEO of Ford International Airport

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of CEOs you Should Know.
This is iHeartRadio's Phil Tower, and I am pleased to
be in studio with Tory Richardson, President and CEO of
Gerald R. Ford International Airport. We remind you, as a
part of our commitment to the communities we serve, iHeartRadio

(00:24):
is proud to introduce CEOs you Should Know, both a
podcast and broadcast feature that we created to profile the
businesses that drive our regional economy. CEOs profiled in these
episodes represent small, large, local and international firms that all
play a role in driving West Michigan's thriving and diverse
business community, and Gerald R. Ford International Airport is certainly

(00:50):
in that category. It's a great pleasure to welcome into
the studio Tory Richardson. I have had Tory on my
target list for a while and it took moving a
couple of different mountains and coordinating a lot of schedules,
but we got one of West Michigan's busiest CEOs in
our studios here and it's a real honor and pleasure

(01:11):
to have you here on the program.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Thank you for thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Happy to be here, Well, I'm happy to have you here,
and we're gonna get personal as we always doing CEOs
you should know, and then we'll talk about the airport
five years now as CEO.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Right, Yeah, it's coming up and it's been fast. Joined
the team September of twenty nineteen. Of course that was
right before the pandemic when everything changed and recovery and
growth since then, so it's been a great four and
a half years, almost five.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
You came from Columbus, I did so.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I was in Columbus, Ohio for a little over seven
years prior to joining the team here in Grand Rapids.
But my background has been airports and aviation across the Midwest.
So before Columbus, Ohio was Fort Wayne, Indiana, before that,
Rapid City, South Dakota before that, Dubukee, Iowa. All doing
airports related work.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, so that's what I wanted to get personal. You
started out working as a ticket agent. Did you go
into an airport and suddenly this magic happened and you
were like, I really love this place, I love the
energy of it, or was it okay, this is a
ticketing job, it's available. I'm going to see how it goes.
If I don't like it, I'll try something else.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
When did you and airport's kind of connecting go This
is going to be a passion of mine.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Actually, it was a little bit of an afterthought. My
initial interest in aviation was flying. So my thought was
I'm going to college, I'm going to start flying and
ultimately have a flying career. This was back in late
eighties early nineties. Went through the program for aviation management
and flight operations. At that time, military was downsizing. Most

(02:50):
of those pilots were coming out taking civilian jobs for
flying with the airline, so there weren't a lot of
opportunities for flying. So I took a management degree and
started working at the airport. That's really what it kind
of opened my door to, Wow, there's a lot of
different avenues that I can take at the airport. As
you mentioned, it might be the airlines, which I did
a little bit of that, did a little bit of
aircraft rescue, firefighting, airport maintenance, support operations, airport administration, so

(03:14):
and you know, working with a fixed base operator, which
is more or less dealing with the you know, private
small business general aviation aircraft. So really got a good
foundation of lots of different experiences to start with and
that built the foundation for my career over the next
you know, thirty years.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Did you handle baggage toy? I did?

Speaker 3 (03:33):
I handled bags, id iced airplanes? Yeah, I'd made coffee,
made coffee, cleaned the restrooms or do it all?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
You do it all that.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
I love that background because a lot of times we read,
you know, CEOs just kind of swap seats from one
company to another. But aviation and airports are truly in
your blood, and Grand Rapids was kind of these up
and coming airports even five years ago, and certainly perhaps

(04:05):
before that. You've probably heard now that you've been in
West Michigan for five years, that this was kind of
a sleepy place many years ago, and it really just
kind of has exploded in the last I would say
probably the last fifteen years has just really had a
cataclysmic positive change, massive growth, just a lot of dynamic
things happening here. Of course, the convention and arena authority,

(04:29):
the Lost Place, everything that's happened downtown. But as that's happened,
it's been a greater demand on air travel at Ford
International and you're seeing that first and now we are.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
And it's absolutely wonderful. It's great We always pride ourselves
in being the you know, the business and the facility
that can help grow with the community and also help
the community grow. And so as the community grows, so
do we and we certainly see that. And you're right,
you know, you mentioned all the great things were happening.
When I was, you know, first starting this, I was
amazed at how many people had a connection to Grand

(05:03):
Rapids and say, oh my, you're gonna love it. This
place has changed way different than it was fifteen twenty years.
This is a progressive city that this is you know,
people proud of what they have and wanting to do more.
And that flows right into even our team at the
airport with all of our airline partners, everybody wanting to
step up and really enhance the experience.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, it's interesting. Columbus came up in a conversation recently.
I was with the president of the Art Museum and
she was talking she was previously in Columbus, and she
said the one thing about Columbus was much more humid
than it is here in Grand Rapids. So I'm glad
I traded the humidity both great cities. But that was like,
that's interesting. So here I am with another Columbus. I

(05:44):
don't want to say transplant, but somebody else has moved
from Columbus to Grand Rapids. As you took the job
knowing there was obviously a lot of opportunity to grow
the airport, to give it a higher profile. Growth has
certainly always been happening, and those of us who were
spent as many years as I have in West Michigan

(06:08):
thirty five plus, we've seen the airport expand, but it
seems like now that's a more accelerated thing. In April,
Ford International and your team just announced one hundred and
thirty five million dollar expansion plan. Once again, we had runways,
we redid terminials a couple of years ago. Let's talk

(06:31):
about that because it's a big deal, especially with respect
to baggage and ticketing that's going to change traumatically.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Why is that important and why is it needed now? Toy?

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, those are great questions, and you're right. So one
of the things that we identified early on, literally through
some studies, were some challenge points that we had at
the airport where we needed to invest some resources to
not only enhance the guest experience, but really prepare for
the future. Right so as we see this growth in
the community, so does the airport, and we need to

(07:04):
be ready for it. Everybody that we talked to, regional economists,
keep saying this is going to be a place that's
going to continue to grow. People are going to want
to continue to be in this area for work, life
and play, and so from an airport's perspective, we need
to be ready for it. We were little behind at
the time. We were a few years behind. So when
we look at planning for the airport, we identified various
issues within the terminal out on the curbfront with our parking,

(07:27):
et cetera. That really kind of prompted the initiative to
start the Elevate program, which is six significant projects focused
on how can we enhance that guest experience and how
can we plan for the future and make our facilities
from a capacity standpoint, from an efficiency standpoint, something that's
going to continue to serve West Michigan well into the future.

(07:49):
And so those projects, many of them, as you mentioned,
you know, they're they're underway. One of them was just
recently completed with Concourse, a one hundred and twelve million
dollar project bringing in eight new gates passenger loading bridges,
new larger gatehold areas, new food beverage retail options, bringing
in local artists, local businesses so that there's a sense

(08:10):
of place. So when people come through that new facility,
they realize, hey, we're in West Michigan, and I get
to see what this is all about, and I get
to see local businesses and local products there. That was
the one we just wrapped up. Just mentioned the one
hundred and thirty million dollars terminal enhancement project that's really
geared towards consolidating all of our ticketing counter functions, our

(08:32):
baggage claim areas, as well as introducing our first ever
automated check baggage inspection system. Really, what that means for
the passenger is you give your bag to the airline,
it goes through a screening process and assortation process. Right now,
all of that is done one hundred percent manually. This
will be an automated system that will help the airline

(08:52):
sort the bags, get him in the right location at
the right time, do all of the precautionary screening that
has to take place with the Transportation securestration. But really
all that happening behind the scenes so that it's an
easy flow for the passenger as a you know, embark
on their journey. So several large projects within that Elevate program.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Technology has certainly been a game changer in every industry.
We were talking about what it's done in broadcasting, but
certainly at the airport level when it can improve that experience.
And I want to talk about baggage for a little bit,
but before I do that, I want to go back
to the passengers and the people coming into the airport,
driving the demand, jumping the numbers up. In fact, twenty

(09:36):
twenty three a record year for Ford International almost four
million passengers. That's kind of mind blowing. It's toy and
this is just twenty twenty three is what four years now,
three and a half years post COVID. Do you kind
of look in the review Maar and go. I can't
believe we recovered that quickly.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
A little bit, but a.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Little bit of it was also early on we saw
the West Michigan region very flexible, very vibrant, and continuing
to travel. So throughout the pandemic, we would we would
consistently compare to our peers in the national average, and
we were typically ten to fifteen points better on the
recovery than most of those other airports. And so yeah,

(10:20):
when we finished twenty twenty three six percent better than
our previous record year, which was twenty nineteen, you know,
that was okay, an aha moment for us, Right, Finally
we're not recovering, we have recovered. We are now into
new growth. This is new passengers, new territory we haven't
been in before, and year to date this year we're
already up fifteen percent over last year, so on pace

(10:42):
for yet another record breaking year, which is driving all
of this investment. So you know, sometimes it's a little
bit of a hassle to have the construction. We are
in a kind of a constant construction mode, but it's
really to accommodate all of that growth so that we
don't have the pain points, you know, misconnecting bags or
people not being able to get on their flight because
they can't get through the screening or the ticketing process

(11:03):
quick enough. So all of those projects are aimed at
facilitating a much easier flow for the passenger for their journey.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know, I have flown during construction projects at Ford
International never had a problem. Maybe I'm just a patient traveler.
Maybe I get to the airport extra early. I can
give full credit to my project manager wife for that,
but I don't think it's very rare that anybody flies

(11:30):
to any airport where there's not some level of construction
going on. But I want to go back to that
increased travel those record number of passengers coming into the airport.
Nearly four million, three point almost three point eight million
travelers passed through the terminal last year, up six percent
from a previous record that was just before COVID, So

(11:52):
that you know, rapid those numbers rapidly ascending, was already
starting roughly five years ago. October the busiest month in
the airport's history, which is think of October as a
busy month, but it's a lot going on. So what
I'm getting at here is how much time Tory Richardson
spends with the passengers. You ever just kind of wander around,

(12:14):
try to go incognito, which is probably not really easy
for you to do. But do you wander into the
terminals just hang around and occasionally talk with passengers.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Absolutely, yeah. If you're out there, you might find me
either pre or post security. So sometimes it's past the
security checkpoint, meeting and talking with our vendors as well,
just trying to get an idea how things are going
for them. So we're very you know, very cautious and
very concerned with how our stakeholders are doing, so talking
with them, talking with passengers. Was out in the terminal
yesterday doing that. Actually had some folks that were out

(12:45):
touring the tower as well.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
So we take the.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Opportunity to interact with our guests, to interact with our
stakeholders and really try to be more of that team
environment and helping each other to really you know, impress
upon the guests a great experts in an easy journey
for them.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Tory Richardson is with us here on iHeartRadio and we
are talking about president and CEO. By the way, Ford
International Airport GRR dot org. If you can't remember that website,
phone me after the show and I'll tell your Lifeboard
dot org will get you there too at liveforard dot
org as well, and make sure you check it out.

(13:25):
It's a terrific website as well. I want to go
back Tori to you were talking about the Elevate program.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
I think it's.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Important our listeners understand how that became reality, why it
was important a ton of research. You've got great consultants
and experts you rely on when it comes to your programming,
your expansion. Talk about the elevate program, why it was necessary,
why it's important for the future of the airport.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, that's a great question, and there's a lot in there.
So when we look at all the different areas of
the air and the needs for what we are going
to see in the future. We're always planning twenty to
forty years out and people tend to think, well, that's
way too far out to really understand, but for us
that that really is the planning horizon for us, and
as it gets closer into that ten to five years

(14:15):
and then five to one years, it gets a little
bit more specific about exactly what's going to happen and when.
But we need to understand the sequencing of all those projects.
We need to understand what the future demand is going
to be for us to build those facilities, go through
environmental pernamitting processes and things like that that it all
is done appropriately so when we need new facilities we
can bring them online at the right time. Really, what

(14:36):
we found out through our master planning process, as I
mentioned earlier, we were a few years behind in some places.
So we identified back in twenty seventeen there was a
shortage of about eleven hundred parking spaces that are covered
close in in the parking garage. That continues, you know,
we continue to lose ground on that. Today we have
you know, probably more of a demand of fifteen hundred

(14:57):
that we can't accommodate. We also identify there wasn't enough
curb space to process all the people on the front
curb pickups and drop offs. We identified that our baggage
claim devices where you go pick up your bag to
leave the airport. Those were built you know, for a facility,
an institution that you know served well in the eighties,
but not at all for you know, two thousands and beyond.

(15:18):
They're not set up for very large airplanes that we
see flying in and out of the Ford every single day.
They were more geared towards the regional carriers, the smaller
regional jets, not for the seven fifty sevens, the air
buses that we're seeing out there today. So those were
well undersize in terms of the size the capacity for
those and so that planning process identified those pain points,

(15:40):
and then our elevate program is identifying each of those
problems and the solutions that need to get put in place.
So a consolidated rental car facility, which you'll get about
a thousand cars out of the parking garage that will
be turned over to public parking when we can do that.
Of course, the long term part of Elevate is a
new parking garage on the north lot. We can't do
that until the air traffic control tower is relocated. So

(16:03):
the air traffic control tower relocation is part of Elevate
and we're working on that. We're going to be at
one hundred percent design completion for that in August here
in about two weeks, and then we'll need to move
to construction. That's going to be a couple of years
of building that. But we mentioned earlier, you know, the
terminal enhancement project that's really identifying and solving some of
those issues at the curb front, at the ticket counters,

(16:24):
getting those consolidated and all in the same space. Improving
efficiency of the baggage flow so we're not leaving bags behind,
but also making sure that when people come back there
are adequate number and size of baggage plane devices so
that it is a seamless journey and people aren't waiting
on bags like we have today. You know, those are
a few of those projects. Another one to throw out

(16:45):
there is in the future we hope to build this
the next phase of our Federal inspection station, which will
set us up for processing international passengers. And in the future,
we see the need for passengers in West Michigan and
be able to need to come and go, not only
do the sun and Fund destinations at all, you know,
some other business locations, and we need that international facility

(17:06):
to be brought online. So that's another part of that
Elevate program.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
I want to talk a little bit more about the
mechanism the funding behind Elevate, but let's back up to
the parking garage because the people listening to us, the
people who fly in and out Ford International Airport, they're
probably curious what that relocation looks like. It's certainly quite
a wig right now, well not too terribly far away

(17:31):
from the airport, but you're moving a lot of things around,
as you said, for parking capacity. Talk about the rental
car change first of all, and that facility because it's
important based on research and also the timeline as well
as we can kind of just drill down and get
a little more detail on that form you.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, So the consolidated rental car Facility or contract as
we call it, as the first one in Michigan. So
we're the first project of that's kind in Michigan and
it's really enabling project. So it's going to get us
the spaces that we need for public parking in the
garage out in front. As you mentioned, you know, you
can literally cross the street or use the elevated skywalk
to go right into the parking garage is completely you know,

(18:11):
covered in climate controlled and.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
By the way, I'm sorry to interrupt. Best first impression
of any airport, and there are a lot of great
airports is we fly. I don't fly a ton, but
I think that major transformation and the exterior of the
airport with the everything being covered the skybridge from parking
just superb. Every time, whether I'm picking somebody up or

(18:35):
we're getting ready to fly out on a trip or
business or whatever, I just I really marvel at how
great that is.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
And I appreciate so much of that. So I'm sorry
to interrupt, but continue. It's a great comment. And those
are the types of comments we'd like to hear because
that reinforces what we're doing. So as we mentioned the contract,
that same theme and concept will carry you through to
the contract. So once again, folks will be able to
grab their bags, stay in any climate control environment through
a walkway that'll take them right to the customer service

(19:04):
building of the new consolidated rental car facility, so don't
have to walk outside. Of course, if you want to
enjoy the weather, you can do that, but if you
want to stay a climate controlled you'll have the option
of doing that as well. And really that is to
get a lot of the existing operations for our rental
cars consolidated into one facility so that they can literally
have the car returned there, service it, so wash it,

(19:27):
fuel it, have it vacuumed, ready to go for the
next customer, all in the same facility. So it's not
zipping up and down Ustama Boulevard, wasting emissions, wasting gas,
wasting people's times. But it's right there. But from a
passenger's perspective, it is connected to the building. Ultimately, when
the final FIS or Federal Inspection facility is built, it'll

(19:47):
all be one seamless building all the way into the
consolidated Rental Car facility. So while you look at it
today and you think it's a little bit further away,
picture in mind that the existing baggage claim four area
will be expanded for that FIS and we'll take you
all the way to the conract facility, so it'll be
one large, connected facility, if you will.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
All right, Tory Richardson, President CEO Ford International Airport with
us here on iHeartRadio. CEOs you should know feature. You know,
when we hear infrastructure at the national level Washington presidential
administrations talking about rebuilding the nation's infrastructures, certainly airports are
part of that. A lot of people might be hearing

(20:27):
you and I talk about all this expansion at Ford
International saying okay, where's this?

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Who's paying for all this?

Speaker 1 (20:33):
Talk a little bit about the funding picture, especially for
elevate if you would police.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah, absolutely, So each project has its own eligibility requirements,
so we can't say one size fits all and all
of the money can be, you know, distributed amongst any
of the projects the way we want. So from the
consolidated Rental Car facility, we charge a customer facility charge
that CFC that we call is being used to pay

(20:57):
for that consolidated rental car facility. In other cases, there
are projects that are FAA eligible, in which case, if
anybody's flying, the federal government is taking some of that
money and redistributing back out to all of the airports
across the nation. Unfortunately, we're probably one of those donor
airports where we put more money into that system than
what we get back. But with Bill, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,

(21:22):
we are seeing a lot of those funds come back
to us for eligible projects like our aircraft rescue fire
fighting facility that we're building right now, and our snow
removal equipment or airfield facilities maintenance facility that we're expanding.
Other projects in there, like the air traffic Control Tower
will be a federally funded project. It's a federal facility

(21:42):
with federal workers in there. We feel that it should
be funded by the federal government as opposed to our
airport revenue. Airport revenues play big part, so when we
look at the terminal Enhancement project, when we're doing some
of the work around Concourse A, there's a large portion
that comes from airport revenues, but most of that is
also coming from the bomb and the passer facility charges

(22:02):
that are charged on a passenger ticket, so that it's
paying for those facilities that essentially are are you know,
generating the use.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
We fail to make that connection, but it results in
a better experience at your local airport. And I'm so
glad you painted that picture because when we look at
you know, airport airfare fees rather sometimes people wonder, Okay,
what am I paying here? But that's really an important
point to make. I want to talk about the control tower,

(22:31):
just real briefly. It was interesting before we turned in
the microphones today you were talking about the control tower,
how the airport itself has outgrown the control tower. Control tower,
not only from a technology standpoint, but just a size standpoint,
kind of looks like it was built for an airport
maybe forty years ago, a big need and how far

(22:54):
down the line before that will happen. What are your
hopes there and the plans there?

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Yeah, so clearly it was built for a time that
we're not in today. We've passed that timeframe, right, it's
outlived its useful life. We are in one hundred percent
design this month. It'll take a little bit for the
final approvals on that and the final environmental work to
be done, and then it needs to move into construction.
We know that it's going to be about a two
year construction window once we can get started, and it

(23:18):
will be a lot of work for us working with
the Federal Aviation Administration to get it from design into construction.
But we've been working on this for well over five years,
so a lot of work has happened over the past
five years to get us to this point, and there
are a lot of different studies and results that need
to be shared and decided upon, and so each year

(23:40):
we've been able to check a little bit more off
on that, you know, those list of things that we
have to accomplish, and we're finally to the point where
we can move to construction. So after several years, we're
going to be at a point where we can start
constructing that. But again, it's going to take us a
couple of years, and it's going to take us a
lot of work to get the FAA, who doesn't have
all the funds necessary to build all these you know,
infrastructure projects across the US, so getting them to prioritize

(24:04):
Grand Rapids needs. It needs to be next on the list.
Has been a key focus for us and a lot
of our elected officials to make sure that you know,
there is that pressure, that understanding that this is a
huge project for us because it is limiting our growth
and as you mentioned, it's useful life. It's too small
for where it's at. So the wrong location, the wrong height,
wrong security building, other building code issues, there's lots of

(24:27):
things that it was fine when it was built in
the late fifties and put in commission, you know, early sixties,
but we've moved beyond that time and now it needs
to be much larger across the airfield, with a better
viewpoint and better access visibility to all the runway environment
and taxway environment that they need to be able to control.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Yeah, I seized upon wrong location because as the runways
changed and the airport expanded, that tower, that viewpoint for
the air traffic controllers changed and there were some negative
impacts there. And you don't think about that. Do you
go up there?

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Very often?

Speaker 3 (25:00):
We do. We're just up there last night with a
couple of our elected officials, again wanting to make sure
that they understand what the needs are and what the
condition is. But yeah, we get up there and we
have a great working relationship with the folks that are there.
It's an interesting concept because we own the first couple
floors and they own the rest of it.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
It's a mutual responsibility. I bet. Yeah, yeah, but they
let you in. It's good.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
They open the door for you. They do got to
have a code, all right. Well that's exciting. That is
a that's a wish list of mind. So someday I'll
give you a call and say, can a lowly radio
host come take a look at the control tower. I
figure if I'm with the CEO, they'll.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Let us in. We'd be happy to have you out there.
I would love to do that, love to do that.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
I have immense respect for air traffic controllers as somebody
who grew up as a kid listening to them on
a scanner radio just loved hearing that. And I think
we all, you know, when we think we have a
stressful day and then we look at what you know,
a major airport air traffic controller goes through. They're really
heroes in a lot of sense in what they do.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
They are and I would say we have some of
the best controllers in West Michigan, right here in Grand Rapids,
So you know, I do fly also, and I talk
to those folks. Most people that are flying in and
out never experience that that transmission, that action between you know,
the pilots and our air traffic controllers.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
But they're top notch.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
They're super friendly, they love what they're doing, they're good
at what they do, and they make in and out
of Grand Rapids a very efficient operation for the pilots,
So kudos to them.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
I could go another half hour with you. Got about
a minute or so left. Anything I didn't ask you
about you wanted.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
To share with our listeners real quick, Well, I think
you touched briefly on some of the stuff just around
you know, us wanting to be a part of the community,
a great part of the community. We like to see
the community grow. Our board is very focused on making
sure that the projects that we do are you know,
with local businesses, paying local residents to do that work,
and reinvesting in our community. We're very proud to just

(26:58):
recently announce that we partnered with GVSU on an economic
impact study over seven billion dollars on an annual basis
that's generated for the West West Michigan region. We think
that's incredible. We want to grow that. Our focus is
in the future. By twenty thirty, we want that to
be ten billion because we see the need for the
community to continue to grow like that and so we

(27:19):
want to be a part of that. And it is
a regional asset that is driving economic activity and growth
in the region.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
And setting a new record for passenger travel into Ford International.
I'm not a betting guy, but I think that's a
pretty easy bet for anybody in the listening audience. This
has been a real honor and a pleasure, and I
knew this was an important conversation to have, and you
have done a superb job and just updating us in
a really dynamic time at Ford International Airport. By the way,

(27:50):
shout out to my Grand Rapids jc's alum friend, one
of your leadership guys on the airport Authority, Dan Korndike,
who was on this program many years ago talking about
the airport. So we're glad to get you in Tory,
and I hope you'll come back in the future absolutely anytime.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
We love it.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
Phil, Thanks for covering our stories and having interest in us. Really,
this is our airport collectively, yours mind and everybody in
the region. So we want people to understand what's happening
out there, and we want it to be positive.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
And how fortunate we are to have at Tory Richardson,
President and CEO Ford International Airport. You can check them
out at GRR dot org. Our guest on CEOs you
should know from iHeartRadio. That's our program. Thank you for listening.