Baltimore native Ricky Smith started as a budget manager for BWI in 1989. Since his appointment in 2015 as head of the Maryland Aviation Administration, he has managed its operations.

One of Smith’s goals has been to better connect the airport, now called Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, to its community. He has developed an initiative to introduce young people to aviation careers and built a program to help minority-owned small businesses participate in BWI’s food and retail program.

Smith, 62, said that, once he realized the airport environment was a place where entrepreneurship and public service come together, he hasn’t looked back.

“I’ve been happily engaged in the aviation industry ever since,” he said.

Under his leadership, BWI was named the top North American airport in its size category in the 2020 Airport Service Quality Awards and won regional Emmys for its commercials.

The Baltimore Banner talked to Smith about a power outage July 13 that briefly grounded flights and left travelers in the dark, Maryland’s transportation budget shortfall and his long history as a transportation professional. He sees low-cost carriers — BWI is known for its bounty of Southwest Airlines flights — as the future of the airport.

The Banner: The airport experienced some outages recently. What can be done in the future, if anything, to respond to these outages?

Smith: One thing about the aviation industry, the airport industry, is that there’s so many environmental exposures that we have no control over, that we have to find ourselves being responsive to and there’s no magic formula or cookie-cutter approach to responding to any particular emergency.

What’s most important is providing as much support as we can to our airline partners, and doing whatever we can to make the experience as pleasant as possible — informing them as much as we can when they’re not always armed with the information that they need.

We made it very clear that you should not come to the airport without contacting your airline ... and then doing simple things like providing water or space for people to sit.

Maryland has a transportation budget shortfall. How is that affecting BWI’s efforts to improve and expand?

The state, like every other economy, goes through cycles. And we’re now going into one of those periods where we are experiencing funding shortages because of the cost of labor, supplies and materials.

That’s impacting the amount of projects that we can get done through the transportation trust fund. So we’ll be looking at our priorities over the next several months or a year and determining how do we get through this period.

We are kind of midway through the largest capital project in the history of the airport [the A/B terminal connection and expanded baggage handling system]. We also have a new aircraft maintenance facility that’s coming online sometime around the summer of next year, as well. That will provide Southwest Airlines the capacity to do aircraft maintenance on-site.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen at BWI since you’ve worked at the Maryland Aviation Administration?

When I started here, the airport was half the size. It had a fraction of the number of carriers. BWI at the time did not have as strong a hub presence as we do today.

Southwest Airlines, although they don’t call it a hub, we are one of their major locations and that has provided a level of stability to the airport and to our community that now positions us as one of the busiest airports in the country.

Getting people from one place to another is central to our mission, but we’re also an economic engine. Airports across the country are beginning to embrace the role of being an economic engine and an economic driver.

I spent a year as an intern with IBM in San Jose [California]. That experience accounted for some of the college credits that I received that helped me finish university in 1987. That’s when I came back home into the airport to improve customer experience.

What do you think are the most important challenges facing BWI?

The challenges that are facing BWI are the same challenges that are facing the entire industry, the same challenges that are facing our national economy, and that is the cost of goods and services are on the rise. It’s becoming progressively more difficult to build projects and to implement projects because they’re much more expensive.

Access to funds is a major challenge for us and part of that is because we’re getting so much less out of each dollar because the cost of labor and cost of supplies and materials.

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in Baltimore City in an area called Reservoir Hill. I really enjoyed the educational experience that I received. Once I finished the public school system, I was offered a scholarship to attend Virginia Union University in Richmond, where I majored in accounting. I pledged Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, and then transferred to Howard University. I was there from 1983 to 1987.

I spent a year as an intern with IBM in San Jose. That experience accounted for some of the college credits that I received that helped me finish university in 1987, that’s when I came back home.

You’re involved with the community. What moves you to do so much community work?

I’m in a circle of people, both locally and nationally, that have just a strong appreciation for trying to help solve the many problems that we have in our communities and to try to give back, so that’s kind of what motivates me.

I have relatives who are still living in many of the neighborhoods that so many of us are trying to turn around. So I’m motivated because I see myself as well in those communities. I remember growing up in those communities, and I have an appreciation for just how blessed or lucky I am. I was always one corner or one incident or one argument away from my life changing, and I think many of the young individuals in our communities are in the same predicament. All it takes is someone with some organization reaching out to them and helping them make better decisions to turn their lives around.

What is your vision for BWI?

The vision for BWI is aligned with the vision for the state. The governor talks about winning the decade. Part of that is growing the economy, and so the airport is important to helping to grow the economy.

The future of the industry lies with low-fare carriers. We continue to invest in facilities to expand our capacity, but we do it in a way that reduces the cost that we pass on to air carriers so that we can maintain that competitive position as a low-fare carrier.

It also allows us to be a more customer-focused airport. We are considered the easy come, easy go airport. That’s our slogan. That’s important to us. As we grow and as our facility gets larger, we don’t want it to become more complicated to use.