A4A President and CEO Nick Calio, recipient of the 2025 ATW Lifetime Achievement Award, talks with Aviation Week's Karen Walker about critical industry challenges his organization has worked through and why he believes the new transportation secretary and Trump administration are taking the right approach to air transportation.
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Karen Walker: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Window Seat, our Aviation Week air transport podcast. I'm ATW and Aviation Week Network air transport editor-in-chief, Karen Walker. Welcome on board. I am absolutely delighted today to be joined by a very special guest, Nick Calio, who is the president and CEO at Airlines for America, or A4A, and also the recipient of the ATW 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Nick, welcome and sincere congratulations. It's lovely to be able to tell you this in person. Congratulations.
Nick Calio: Thank you, Karen. I am delighted to get this Lifetime Achievement Award from ATW. I'm looking forward to our dinner at the IATA AGM. And you are very kind and generous, so thank you.
Karen Walker: Absolutely. Totally our honor, and it is very, very well-deserved.
Now, A4A, of course, is a Washington DC-based trade association that represents North America's top airlines. And under Nick's leadership, A4A rebranded and honed its focus on being an influential voice shaping legislative and regulatory policies and priorities. Nick has focused A4A on working collaboratively with airlines, unions, [the US] Congress, the executive branch, and all about promoting safety, security, and the good health of the US airline industry. And that, of course, has been no easy challenge whatsoever. His leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic was exemplary and it helped save the industry from ruin and to secure nearly $60 billion in financial assistance as part of the CARES Act. And I know, again, that was an incredible effort.
Before joining A4A in January 2011, Nick was an executive at Citigroup, and he also served as an assistant to the president for legislative affairs to both President George W. Bush and President George H.W. Bush. So, Nick has announced that he will retire from A4A at the end of this year. And as you've just heard very briefly, we're going to hear a lot more in a second, he has done an incredible amount of good work at A4A.
So, Nick, again, welcome on board. Congratulations. I'd like to start off, what attracted you to this organization, to A4A, and the airline industry, given the career path that you had before them?
Nick Calio: Karen, that's kind of a funny question, actually. I love to fly as many, as you've heard me say, probably too many times. Where I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, nobody got on an airplane. And my first flight was when I was 17 years old for a recruiting trip to Northwestern University. The next time I flew was when I was going to school in England, and the next time I flew after that was after I finished law school. But I loved to fly. I learned to love to fly after being scared to death to do it in the beginning.
But, that said, I had one of our member airlines from A4A as a client during the 1990s when I had my own firm. And I was approached about this job by Glenn Tilton, the then chair of United Airlines. And he and I had met at Citigroup because I would do these high-worth client dinners, talk about politics and stuff. And we hit it off and he came and approached me about the job, and I told him, "No way." And he said, "Why?" I said, "Because I know you. And you all are famous for arguing with each other. You say you have a position. You go in and you see a member of Congress or a regulator, you leave, and you all start making individual calls saying you really didn't mean it or it should have this or it should have that." And the proof of the pudding in that is when I did take the job, Jay Rockefeller, then the chairman of the Commerce Committee, called me up and he said, "Through two White Houses, I always thought you had good judgment. Now, I'm not sure. What were you thinking about?"
Anyway, long story short, Glenn told me, and then subsequently each and every other board member who decided they wanted to interview me said that they wanted, quote, “leadership and guidance.” They were tired of operating the way they did. They kept getting hurt. They never got anything out of legislation—like the Obama, the infrastructure package, they were the only industry shut out. And the other thing that really got my attention was flight benefits. First-class space positive for me and my wife and any child under 25. And if I stayed five years, those became lifetime benefits, as did the top tier status at all airlines. That's a huge incentive for somebody who likes to travel and fly.
Karen Walker: That's an amazing story. What you were just saying about the industry is so interesting, but I think it needed the insight that you could bring, and the honesty, frankly, the honesty that you could say, "You guys just can't get your act together," essentially. I've often said this industry, and I share with you, I'm sure, I love the industry, I love flying, I love being at airports and watching the whole system happen, but it just seems to me that for all the good work that airlines do, they've been very, very bad at conveying a message and having unity, a unified voice. I think that's really what you saw and then have been very focused on since coming to A4A, which started, of course, you did a rebrand as well. So, tell us a little bit about that.
Nick Calio: Well, it was the Air Transport Association of America, which was boring as a name and had the most dismal logo I've ever seen. And the board members held true to what they said, and in very short order, we totally changed the association over a matter of months. We rewrote the bylaws, because at that time, if you came to a unified conclusion, if you came to a conclusion about an issue that the association would work on, one member could veto having the association work on it. That is lowest common denominator stupid. So, we changed that. There was no strategic planning process. There was no plan. They always say having a plan is not a strategy, but we worked on getting both and put that in place. There was no compensation structure. We put that in place.
And then we pretty much rebuilt the staff from the bottom up. And I was told that I could hire and fire at will and pay the best people to get the best people on the job. Having the ability to do that changed the face of the association because that staff, many of whom are still with me, and we've added people over the years, but all of the same quality, all A, A+ players, allowed us to do a lot of things we hadn't done before. And we pretty quickly got attention for the stands we were taking, the way we were advocating what we were doing.
And by the end of the year, or 11 months later, we became Airlines for America with the tagline, "We connect the world." And I was amazed, Karen, how it caught on. All of a sudden, A4A became a thing and still is a thing today. So, that was really gratifying work. Plus, what we were able to do. There had been at that point 23 extensions of the FAA reauthorization bill, and we were able to work out among our members a slots agreement, which was one of the two things, the other being a labor dispute, blocking the reauthorization bill. Came back to Jay Rockefeller when I called him and said, "We have a deal on slots." He says, "I don't believe you." And we did. We got the reauthorization, which was a really good thing.
Karen Walker: Absolutely. It has struck me, the support. Very, very strong support that you've had from your members, the airlines, their leaders, their CEOs in particular. They not only seem to really see the value now of what A4A brings, but they talk glowingly about you and what A4A does. It seems to me that that was a big switch that you were able to do pretty quickly, that they could see the value in this.
Nick Calio: It was—because we started winning. We stopped all taxes, all fees. I won't go into the weeds on some security issues and some other things. There was a revenue diversion of TSA fees, and for that, we got another fee eliminated that had been instituted on 9/11 that was costing our airlines $486 million a year, saved in perpetuity every year. So, those were big deals.
So, they started to, and you had your bedrock over the years of people who really saw the value. Doug Parker, Gary Kelly, Dave Barger, then Robin Hayes. And everybody was always, not always, but oftentimes willing to give up a little bit in their interest to do something for the industry, which is the key to any trade association going forward and getting things done. If every member tries to do everything on their own with their own nuance, members start to listen. I recently had a call from the chief of staff of the new [US] DOT that said, "Tell your members to get on the same page," about something. And that's a wake-up call.
Karen Walker: Yeah, absolutely. And how do you work, how does A4A work with other organizations? And talk a bit about that collaboration that you do with, say, unions and other associations.
Nick Calio: It's something that we try to do every day. You're a lot stronger if you have allies and if you can put aside some of your differences. Early on, I reached out to labor. The reception was, I would say, chilly at best. But I think I, and we, proved ourselves over time, and we have been great allies. When we walk in somewhere together, management and labor, people listen. They don't have a choice, basically.
And we're currently in the process, we've been building this coalition to get ready for whenever Secretary Duffy and President Trump, who have been just a breath of fresh air, I have to say, drop their package to try to reform the air traffic control system and get the FAA up and running on the right foot. And you know this as well as anybody, Karen, how dismal it's been for how many years. And it's made up of every aspect of the airline industry, manufacturers, OEMs, avionics makers, and the labor unions. And we're formalizing that coalition now, so when that bill drops or that initiative drops, we'll all be behind it 100%.
And to do that, you always have to give. You always have to take. And we have decided as a group, general aviation, general aviation manufacturers, airline pilots association, the air traffic controllers, we're going to stick to what's important because we have a galvanizing moment now after that disastrous heart-rending crash to keep everybody focused on what needs to be done to a system that's been deteriorating for years without appropriate action.
Karen Walker: Yeah, and of course, obviously the crash that you refer to was at Reagan Airport on both our doorsteps. We both are located very close to Reagan. And as you say, just absolute tragedy. And I've written this, the tragedy is that, as you said, the system, it wasn't a new problem. They've been talking about air traffic ... That's the problem, is it? They've been talking about air traffic system reform forever, but it's the lack of action and true investment.
I watched your testimony, watched you give testimony, Nick, at Congress on this whole ATC [air traffic control] reform thing, which, of course, was in the light of that crash. You came out with some really strong points there, of course. So, just give me some of the top lines there. When it comes to ATC modernization, what's the A4A big wants?
Nick Calio: The big ones are pretty simple. And there's things that we've been talking about for years, which I made clear at that hearing. At that hearing, Karen, I told the story of John Mica, who was then chairman of the committee who I had known for a long time from my White House days. And three days in, he calls me up and says I'm testifying next week. And I said, "John, I'm not ready. I'm just starting the job. There's a lot to do." He says, "You'll be fine. We'll be nice to you."
So, I go back through all the previous testimony going back to 1995. This is now 2011. And I said, "Good God, we've been saying the same things over and over and over again." So, we said them over and over again, and I said at that hearing that the systems had an inflection point and we have to do the following things. And this went on for years. And during the hearing you referenced, Karen, I went back over some of it. And as you know, I've been using the paper strips that are used in the tower and the floppy disks, both of which have now become famous, I'm happy to say, as props to get the message across. This is how far behind we are.
So, we want three things, basically. We want more air traffic controllers. We think pumping up the system at the Oklahoma training facility is a good thing, but we also think more is needed. And the college training initiative, which got obliterated during the Obama years, is starting to get back up and running, but it should be embraced and pushed forward because we need so many controllers to make up for retirements and other attrition, people washing out.
We need to have, frankly, a pot of money that's going directly to fix things on a current basis because all the money that Congress has appropriated, or not all, but 92% of the money that Congress has appropriated for, say, the last 15 years has gone to piece-and-patch a dying system. And part of that has to be that the FAA needs to be willing to buy things off the shelf that they don't make themselves because they are billions of dollars and years behind. And that kind of technology drift doesn't work because at the time they do bring it forward, it's out of date already. And it doesn't make sense. Smart people take other people's work to make themselves look good.
And then the final thing, and this is not as quite the priority, but it's a long-term priority, steadier funding. You've got the Airport Improvement Program, and that could be part of the funding, but in a way that leaves it whole. You've got other examples, the Harbor Maintenance Fund, which allows the appropriators in Congress oversight, but provides a steady source of funding. And then what we do with highways. And that would provide long-term stable ability to invest in capital projects.
So, those three things.
Karen Walker: Right, yep, so the funding and the investment and the people. It's still very much the people, isn't it? And people with the skills. Yeah, absolutely. That's right. And it's awful that it took a tragedy like that for this to really resonate, but if that's one good thing that can come out of this, it would be very, very significant.
Again, when it comes to collaboration, and you mentioned in particular the unions. It seems to me that obviously with COVID, we all are very aware of the awfulness that that brought to the airline industry as a whole. But again, that was very much a case of where you presented a very unified voice and brought in—I saw you giving presentations side by side with the unions and other organizations. Talk a little bit about some of the key things that hit you as you were dealing with all of that COVID stuff.
Nick Calio: Well, as you know, Karen, it hit like a ton of bricks. It was so fast. And we needed to try to do something, and it was everybody's jobs, so we started to reach out to say that we need to work together on this to try to save jobs. We had a concurrent path, which was the health benefits. There were people saying that it was very unhealthy, unsafe to get on an airplane. People were scared. Flying dropped 90% in the matter of two weeks. We were hemorrhaging billions of dollars. We came to the conclusion that we could talk about HEPA filters and everything else all we wanted to as airlines, that people were not going to think we were credible because it was in our own interest.
And to make a long story short, I reached out to Boeing, Airbus, GE Aviation, all the other players in the industry, airports, and labor, and said, "We need to have a coalition. We need to fund the coalition." I then reached out to Harvard University, Dr. Lenny Marcus at the National Public Leadership Institute. He brought us together with the School of Public Health. I had to guarantee them their independence of study, which at times got a little bit scary for the people because they were scientists, there were rabbit holes, but in the end it worked out extremely well. Quick work for that kind of work.
Their conclusion was that you're safer on an airplane than you are in a grocery store and probably than you are in your own home. It changed the entire narrative and we were able to move forward. And that worked hand in glove with what we were doing with the administration and Congress on the payroll support program. And we had a very close partnership with labor when we first started negotiating what we're after. Frankly, I got a long list of the traditional labor demands. We went through them, and then we decided we had to hold hands and go together and take what was doable. And it was trust and verify because you couldn't go in and start saying, "Well, we need this on collective bargaining. We need this on liability protection."
So, we stuck to the basics and we got three tranches of the payroll support program. It kept a lot of people on their jobs. It brought the industry back much faster because we couldn't keep everybody on, and we had a higher up, but when demand came back, it came back very fast. And in our industry, as you know, most people don't realize everybody needs to be trained and retrained and recertified, and that takes time. You just can't throw a pilot a set of keys and say, "Start up the airplane." But we had the pilots, we had the flight attendants, we had the machinists, we had everybody involved. We had that one press conference up on Capitol Hill with the Capitol in the background. All of us standing together, that was very powerful.
Karen Walker: Yes, it was. I was at that. I went to that event, and everybody was still wearing masks even though we were outside. But it was very powerful. This is what I was getting to, the fact that you had so many aspects of different organizations, different interests really in the industry, but all there and all presenting one voice. And as you say, it was interesting because it was very complicated. You were working to save the industry from an incredible and sudden financial disaster, but you were also having to get the message to people that it was safe to fly. So, it was a very complicated effort. Incredible.
Also, on the safety side, another amazing effort, I thought, that you led from the A4A perspective when it comes to safety was with the 5GC implementation. That doesn't, I think, get as much publicity or understanding necessarily, but it was really important. Can you just talk a little bit about that, please?
Nick Calio: Yeah, that was a very difficult issue because there was huge safety issues involved. And then Administrator [Stacey] Dixon pointed them out and, frankly, got a deaf ear from the rest of the DOT and from the NEC at the Biden White House. And they didn't want hear about it, and we had to prove to them that it was a problem and that we were going to fly, because as you know, if it's not safe, we will not put an airplane in the air. And it got very testy. It dragged on for weeks and weeks. I don't think the then secretary was very aware until a Sunday call, and I finally said, "We're not putting any planes in the air as of Tuesday when this starts, and you need to know that."
And so all of a sudden, people started to scramble. We reached an agreement with the telecoms. That worked out to everyone's benefit to make it safe because you can't blow past safety concerns and have interference with the avionics of planes trying to land or take off. So, it doesn't get as much attention. I don't want to say it ruined all of November, December, and part of January, but my daughter got married on New Year's Eve that year and I was on the phone almost full-time when I finally said, "Enough is enough." One of my friends at Boeing called me and said, "I just need 90 seconds." And I said, "You never need 90 seconds." And I said, "I'm not talking to you. I'm going down for the first viewing of my daughter's dress."
Karen Walker: Good for you. But yes, again, a very important issue that needed some truths to be told and strong voice.
I'd like to also—actually, you mentioned earlier you said a breath of fresh air with the new transport secretary and obviously the new president. And I think some of the things we've been seeing or were seeing under the previous administration was the focus on airlines are bad, airlines are anti-consumer, and there was some activity going on. Is that the sort of thing that you are hoping to see much less of?
Nick Calio: It is something in the world you're seeing much less of. That was their only focus. We didn't think there was any basis. In fact, most of the stuff that they were proposing and talking about and slamming us about were things that were already done. You have to start from the basics. One, this is one of the most competitive industries in the country, in the world, anywhere. It is ruthless competition. How do you compete? Or why do you compete? Because you want customers and you want cargo coming back your way repeatedly.
So, the basis, their worldview was just very different that we were out to screw people. And we don't. That's not what we're about. Just look at the innovations we've made over the last seven or eight years for our customers. And the quality of flying is so much better. All of the apps, all of the technical innovations, the availability of programming on TVs, all sorts of other things. But their view was that, my personal opinion, and since I'm retiring I'm going to say this, as long as they got publicity for it and they had the consumer groups and the progressive groups applauding them, they were really happy about it. And it was very damaging and unnecessary.
At the same time, they didn't want anything to do with any of the difficult issues that the president and Secretary Duffy had dove into had first to try to fix. We have had more progress on those issues in two and a half months than we had in the previous four years, and longer. You have to have a really strong will and a lot of thoughtfulness about how to approach these issues. And they are doing it in that fashion. Not just, how do we get the money to do it? Who does it? Who is, quote, “the general contractor” on the job to make sure there's accountability so that these things happen?
Because Karen, as you know, and I'm sure many of your listeners know, a lot of money has gone to the FAA and the DOT, and things don't happen. That's why we still have paper strips. It's unbelievable. That project's been ongoing for probably, I think, eight years now and we still have paper strips. The floppy disks, you've heard me tell the story, I took them around to people in my office who were under 30. Not one could identify what I was holding. It's amazing.
Karen Walker: Yeah, so action is what's needed. So, it's good and you seem to be seeing that.
I must push back on you a little and ask you, Nick, there's a lot of concern about the talk of tariffs, particularly on the air cargo side. It's just more uncertainty. And as you know, air cargo can swing one way or another very quickly. Do you have any concerns about even just the talk of tariffs and what that effect could be on the airline industry?
Nick Calio: Of course we do. We have written a letter, basically a supply chain letter, which I can get to, but there are concerns about the supply chain, the disruptions in the supply chain, and what they all mean for manufacturing and for jobs. Also, for the airline industry, the airplanes are put together in various places and brought together here. And the thing is, the underlying fact is our industry has a trade surplus, a big trade surplus. So, if you wanted to do it the smart way, you'd leave us out of it. And I know every industry will say that. We can prove it, and that should be the key.
So, we're behind in manufacturing airplanes for a variety of reasons, and we need more airplanes. With demand, we need to replace the fleets. We're in the process of doing that. It would be a shame to slow that down for reasons that don't comport to the facts on the ground, or I should say in the air. I guess both.
Karen Walker: Can I just ask you, a lot of challenges that you've been dealing with, this industry is never boring, is it? There's always something else popping up to deal with. But what do you most enjoy about your work? As you go through the transition of handing over to the next A4A leader, what would be your biggest hope for the industry and for the airline A4A members going forward?
Nick Calio: Well, first, I would've to say the thing I enjoy most about my job is my staff. They are my second family. We are tight as ticks. We work hard. We play hard. They have faced every crisis. They shine. They make me look good. They make the industry look good. That's what I will miss most.
What I won't miss is the day-to-day pressure of the industry because it just never ends. And no matter how much you think you can delegate or back off, you can't. And my hope for the industry is that it continues to thrive and grow. My hope for the association is that it is appreciated by its members and used by its members in the appropriate way. And my hope for the future is that a year after I leave, people will look at A4A and say they are as good or better as they ever were with their new leader.
Karen Walker: I think there's a very good chance of that perk. You've set up such an incredible organization. But people will be very, very sorry to see you leave. I'm sure you'll stay connected. It gets in your blood, this industry.
Nick, thank you so much. And again, sincere congratulations on being the recipient of the ATW 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award. I think we've just heard a snapshot of, and there's a lot, lot more, but we'll be doing some videos and articles telling the full story, but we've just heard a great snapshot of why you are really deserving of it. I wish you and everyone at A4A a very successful year as you go through that transition. So, thank you, Nick, for joining us. I know how crazy your schedule is, so your time is most appreciated.
And thank you also to our producers, Guy Ferneyhough and Cory Hitt. Of course, a huge thank you to our listeners. Make sure you don't miss us each week by subscribing to Window Seat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you like to listen. This is Karen Walker disembarking from Window Seat.
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