Airport Experience® News - Leadership Issue 2025

Christina Cassotis has spent most of her life in and around the world of aviation. Early in her career she joined the Massachusetts Port Authority , followed by a nearly decade-long stint at consulting firm SH&E (which would later merge with ICF ), then taking on the leadership of Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) as CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority . Still, despite more than three decades in the industry – and a childhood influenced by aviation – Cassotis wasn’t purposeful in her pursuit of an airport career. “I just realized recently that I always thought that airports were going to be something I did until I figured out what I really wanted to do,” Cassotis says. Whether planned or not, Cassotis has been a catalyst for change and growth in the industry. Since taking the helm at PIT in 2015, she has overseen massive changes to the terminal facility, air service offerings and airport positioning in the Pittsburgh region. Early on, Cassotis successfully transitioned PIT from being a US Airways hub to a medium-sized, successful origin-and destination airport. Post-pandemic, Cassotis led the airport in bringing the concessions program in-house, shifting away from the long-standing developer model. The crowning achievement is the $1.7-billion new terminal facility at PIT that opened in mid-November. The project, which began construction in 2021, marks the culmination of the airport’s transformation from the old hub facility to a state-of-the-art terminal designed to meet the need of Pittsburgh-area residents and visitors to the city. Because of her successful reinvention of PIT and her innovative approach to envisioning the wants and needs of future travelers, Airport Experience News selected Cassotis as its Director of the Year in the medium airports category. Laying the Groundwork Cassotis grew up in rural New Hampshire but a world-traveling father – a commercial airline pilot whose routes included Asia – influenced her to seek something bigger. “Having a father who had this global view of the world – and we talked about it a lot at home, he made food from around the world – I just knew I wanted to be part of it so I figured out how to do it.

Her airport career started in the communications department for Massport. “That was fun, and I was there almost five years,” Cassotis recalls. “Then I was recruited to SH&E, which I loved until I didn’t. “I thought airlines were the epitome of the industry – if I could just make it to an airline, that’s what I wanted,” she says. “When I arrived at Pittsburgh, in the first three years I was thinking, I wonder what’s next. It’s taken me a very long time to realize that this is what I love to do, and this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” In fact, talk of the PIT role was initially a non-starter for Cassotis. Months earlier, she had been laid off by SH&E, which coincided with her earning a master of business administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The lay-off turns out to have been fortuitous – “I should have left years before they laid me off,” Cassotis says – as it opened the door to new opportunities. “I knew I wanted an operating role,” Cassotis recalls. “One of the reasons I had gone to MIT, was to get the tools in my tool belt for an operating role. I can look back now and tell you I was tired of consulting, but I wasn’t willing to admit it. They gave me a push that I needed. A former colleague at SH&E recommended her for the PIT position, but she wasn’t immediately sold. She eventually came around to excitement about the challenge of reinventing the airport, then had to sell the airport authority and the community on her vision. “The real work for me was in educating people in the community that a successful model, business model for an airport doesn’t have to be a hub,” Cassotis says, noting that some in the community, having had a US Airways hub for decades, thought the hub structure was the only one that made sense. “Over and over again I would point to places like Tampa, Boston, Portland, Oregon, San Diego – these are places that people don’t fly through, they fly to or from,” she recalls. “I said, ‘that’s already happening here, so let’s build our future with that. Let’s bring in the air service that the community deserves. Let’s understand the niche markets of this community so we can line up the right markets, the right frequencies, the right aircraft type, the right growth model, right the right mix of [carriers]’.”

In fact, Cassotis didn’t want any part of trying to revisit the hub-based glory days. “I said to them, if you want somebody who’s going to bring you a hub, don’t hire me,” she recalls. “And I told them the market has shifted. It sounds a little arrogant now, but I thought ‘Oh, this will be easy because they haven’t caught the wave on being able to sell themselves as an O&D market.’ That’s what I spent a career doing. I knew how to match airports to airlines, and that was the easiest part.” The Kitchen Cabinet That reinvention as an O&D airport wasn’t easy, Cassotis stresses, but it was easier than tackling the operational side of the job, given that she lacked experience in that area. “I felt really comfortable with the business end, not as comfortable with the operational end,” she says. Cassotis called in reinforcements in the form of a makeshift “kitchen cabinet” to help her guide decisions and troubleshoot challenges. She tapped Jim Jarvis, a former Massport colleague who is now an associate vice president at Ricondo ; Jeff Fagan, who Above: Cassotis has built her career in aviation over the past three decades. She joined PIT in 2015, her first airport director position. She formed a “kitchen cabinet” of experienced advisors to help guide her in the role. (Photo by Laura Petrilla)

25

AX NEWS DECEMBER 2025 / JANUARY 2026