Michael Huerta grew up in the Imperial Valley of Riverside County, CA.“It was a place,” he recalled, “that the Chamber of Commerce described as, ‘an hour from the beach, and hour from the mountains, and an hour from the desert,’ which to those of us growing up there meant that we were in the middle of nowhere.”
A second generation American, Huerta’s grandparents came from Mexico to work in the California orange industry. His father also worked picking oranges until he was drafted to serve during World War II, where he became an Army medic serving in the Pacific theater. During his deployment, Huerta’s father was hit by enemy fire, and would earn aPurple Heart and a Bronze Star.
Huerta’s parents were adamant that both he and his three sisters would graduate college a goal that all four would accomplish.With her children in school, his mother would earn a two-year degree as well as a library certificate, and enjoyed a long career asa school librarian.
“Ours is kind of the classic story,”Huerta recalled. “When I interviewed withPresident Obama, he asked, ‘...tell me about yourself.’ As I began to go over my professional career, he raised his hand and said,‘I know all of that. Tell me about your parents.Tell me about where you grew up. Tell me about your family.’ After sharing whatI described to him as a ‘typical story’, he replied, ‘It’s a very American story.’”
As a child, Huerta was fascinated by airplanes.“I grew up next to one of the nation’s oldest airports, Flabob Airport (RIR). I had a paper route, and would sometimes ride my bike up to just watch what was going on there,” he said.
Huerta would read about aviation and airlines, and would often build model airplanes. While aviation fascinated him, he did not see it as part of his future.
“When I went to college it wasn’t with the thought of having a career in aviation. In collegeI really got interested in international relations, and really wanted to be a diplomat,” he said.
After earning his undergraduate at UCRiverside, Huerta went on to graduate school at Princeton University.
It was during a summer internship between his two years at Princeton at the United States mission to NATO in Brussels,Belgium, that Huerta’s career path started to take shape.
“My experience was both incredible and eye-opening,” he remembered, “because I not only developed an appreciation for the really hard work that diplomats do, I also came to the realization that the job wasn’t the perfect thing for me.
Huerta soon shifted his focus from diplomacy to the trade and business aspects of trade.
Upon graduation from Princeton, Huerta joined a consulting firm that assisted companies with trade development activities. His experience there culminated in a project with USAID in the eastern Caribbean.
“Our work was to encourage the newly-independent governments to find ways to diversify their economies so as not to be solely focused on agriculture, but not to become wholly dependent on tourism,” he said.
He would soon be assigned to work in St. Kitts and Nevis, a country in the West Indies. It was an assignment that would further refine his career.
“As an island nation focused on import/export, you get to into the heart of logistics,”explained Huerta, “When you live on an island you begin to understand the importance of your port infrastructure, your airport infrastructure, and all of the services that are needed to connect you to the rest of the world.”
It was his success in St. Kitts and Nevis that drew the attention of Ed Koch, the then Mayor of New York City.
“I got a call from Koch’s office,” Huerta recalled, “asking if I might be interested incoming to New York as they were rethinking as how the City positioned itself as a destination for international business development, while at the same time focusing on the relationship they had with the Port Authority ofNew York and New Jersey in managing the ports and airport infrastructure.
In 1986, Huerta signed on as the Commissioner of Ports and Terminals. He and his team would soon rebrand and refocus the department as the Department of Ports, International Trade and Commerce, eventually to be known as the Department of Ports and Trade.
“New York had no problem as an international destination for financial services,” Huerta stated. “What the City really wanted to focus on how you maintained and grew a manufacturing base from foreign companies. In the end, it was a pretty successful program.”
The success Huerta had in New YorkCity drew the attention of San Francisco City officials, who in 1989 offered him the opportunity as Director of the Port of San Francisco.
“People think of the San Francisco water front as Fisherman’s Wharf, as Pier 39, or other tourist developments,” said Huerta. “But it’s on the southern bayside that’s the industrial waterfront of the city. While I was there, we did a good job of maintaining and growing our port business, and ensuring that we could remain competitive as a port destination.”
It was while in San Francisco that Huerta’s experiences resulted in an introduction to the Department of Transportation (DOT).
“At that time,” recalled Huerta, “Congress was developing the Surface Transportation Authorization, which eventually became the1992 Act. They were really trying to get away from a traditional highway bill, and instead making it truly intermodal. How could you invest in port infrastructure? Connections tor ail infrastructure? Connections to airports? The Ports Trade Association nominated me to represent the port industry in their discussions with the DOT.
After the 1992 election, the Clinton administration was looking for someone to run the newly-established intermodal office within the office of the Secretary of Transportation, then headed by Francisco Pena. Huerta was offered the job of Associate Deputy Secretary under Pena, who when succeeded by Rodney Slater, offered Huerta the job of Chief of Staff. It was a position he would hold for the next two years.
While working for the Secretary, one of Huerta’s ancillary duties was to be a liaison to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics’ committee, assisting with transportation needs. It was his experience with Atlanta that led to his taking on a more-substantial role in overseeing the transportation team of the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
“In working on the Olympics,” said Huerta, “you have a very simple objective, and that is you never want to be in the news. If the transportation system is working well, you will not be in the news. The focus will be where it needs to be: the athletes and the great competition.”
Post-Olympics saw Huerta working with a technology company called Affiliated Computer Services, where he served as president of the Transportation Solutions Group.
“At the time, the business was owned by Lockheed-Martin,” he explained, “and while you might not be familiar with Lockheed’s transportation group, you are certainly aware of what we did. We were one of the original integrators of what would become EZPass, the electronic toll collection system. We worked with cities to help them manage their street parking systems and their parking enforcement systems.”
With the election of President Obama, Huerta was invited by the administration to join other former DOT officials to form the transportation cluster of Obama’s transition team.
“It was while working through the transition,”recalled Huerta, “that I realized that I really wanted to get back into public service. It’s one thing to be a technology provider to government. It’s something quite different when you are in the middle of trying to figure out where does government need to go to be responsive to the needs of the public at large.”
It was at this time that Huerta was offered the position of Deputy Administrator of the FAA.
As the position was described to him by the newly-appointed Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, Huerta would take on the air traffic modernization portfolio.
“LaHood said to me, ‘You’ve been in the transportation technology business, and you could bring a lot as we think about this technological evolution to the air traffic system,’”said Huerta, “I replied that I couldn’t tell him that a mission-critical toll collection system on the New Jersey Turnpike is in the same league as what’s being worked on at the FAA.”
While LaHood agreed, he countered that what Huerta understood was the challenges and issues in deploying technology within a government setting. After a later conversation with recently-confirmed FAAAdministrator Randy Babbitt, Huerta agreed to take on the role of Deputy Administrator.
“The first challenge that hit me the dayI walked in the door,” recalled Huerta, “was that we were early in the deployment of the En Route Automation Modernization system. The program was significantly behind schedule, and projected to be significantly over budget. The first challenge that was thrown my way was to get the program back on track and ensure that it remained on track. One of the problems I saw was that those who were responsible for the deployment of the new system were the same ones responsible for operating the existing system.When you have major project responsibility and day-to-day operational responsibility,t he day-to-day will always take precedent, as it should. But it becomes very difficult for your project to stay on track and achieve its milestones.”
Huerta separated these functions, and created within the FAA a program management organization under air traffic with the sole responsibility of deploying this new program.
“Doing this gave both clarity on roles and responsibilities for deployment of the program, and also established a discipline of what would be the requirement for us to cutover from the old system to the new system,” he said.
“Having established clarity of roles, we then had to really engage the users. We hadn’t engaged the end users of the system to the degree we needed to. We were able to establish a very collaborative process with the air traffic controllers’ union, gathering their feedback, their needs, and to ensure that as the program was deployed, that they would embrace it, and it would be responsive to what they were looking for. It was not easy at first as there was not a whole lot of trust. Over time, we were able to establish a very tight, collaborative relationship that resulted in the successful deployment of ERAM within the revised schedule and revised budget.”
Originally, Huerta thought his job inthe FAA as Deputy Administrator would expire after Obama’s first term. However, that changed in December of 2011, when Babbitt stepped down as FAA Administrator. With Babbitt’s departure, Huerta becameActing Administrator.
“It was incredible,” he recalled, “how the team at the FAA rallied around me. I had not ‘grown up’ within the FAA staff structure, and when you first get to the FAA as an ‘outsider,’ I think there is a little bit of skepticism. People really want to first understand what do you bring to the table. Equally, if not more important is that they want to see that you understand the importance and complexity of the work that they do. That you respect and understand the qualifications that they bring to the job. And if you do, you reach that moment that they will do anything for you. The men and women of the FAA are incredibly committed to what they do. There is a clarity of mission that is very unique within the government, and a dedication and purpose that everyone there rallies around.”
Soon after assuming the role of ActingDirector, Transportation Secretary LaHood approached Huerta. “He asked me two questions. First, wouldI consider being nominated as Administrator? Second, would I serve a full five-year term?”
Huerta replied positively to both questions, and on March 12, 2012, President Obama formerly nominated him as Administrator. He would be confirmed January of the following year.
When asked what the biggest challenges during his tenure as FAAAdministrator were, Huerta is quick to reply, “The biggest challenge is one that continues to this day: stable and predictable funding. We had sequestered in 2013, which was a watershed event for government in general. In my seven and a half years at the FAA, we never started a fiscal year with our budget in place. There was either a lapse in authorization, short-term appropriations, and continuing resolutions. Sequestration really showed how difficult it is for an organization that’s expected, first and foremost, to ensure the safety of the flying public, and to do it seven days a week, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. And that is, long-term, an issue that the FAA continues to deal with, and one that we as a nation need to address.”
In looking back at the successes he had while Administrator, Huerta noted, “We put a significant emphasis on the recognition that aviation really is a team sport, and in order to ensure the highest levels of safety, and to get to your highest levels of efficiency, you can’t go into this with the view that the agency has all the answers. It needs to be a collaborative approach where you’re working with your stakeholders in industry, your partners in labor, and everyone is working together to ensure the information is widely shared. That you are able to identify your safety priorities, what are the challenges you need to overcome to take advantage of technology, how do you get more efficiency out of the system, and continue to raise the bar on safety at the same time?
“Some of the things that we established that were particularly important included the NextGen Advisory Committee. We really wanted to hear from industry what their priorities were for taking advantage of all the advances in technology. We followed that model in what ultimately became Part107 when we established a Drone Advisory Committee, determining how we were going to introduce drones into an already complex airspace. That’s still very much a work in progress.
“We also implemented a compliance philosophy which is now the ComplianceProgram within aviation safety. It was a recognition that, at the end of the day, we were not looking to issue enforcement penalties to perceived ‘bad actors,’ but what we wanted to ensure is compliance with standards. Sometimes people and organizations will make mistakes. What you want to have is an environment where they can acknowledge those mistakes, and you can work together toe nsure compliance with the standard. How do you do that? First, you ensure transparency.You then ensure that, if it’s an honest mistake, you are going to work with them toget to compliance. If they are being careless and willful, you still have enforcement, butlet’s not start with that, and assume that everyone’s a bad actor. That was a big change for us culturally within the FAA.
In looking at challenges ahead, Huerta returns to the issue of funding. “We need to be much more open about some of the funding challenges that are out there. We are funded largely out of the Aviation Trust Fund, but we are still subject to appropriations. Does that really make sense? TheTrust Fund has not been updated since the 1990s. Back then, commercial space launches were a very small portion of operations in the NAS. They’ve since grown exponentially, but commercial space pays nothing into the Aviation Trust Fund. Likewise, with new users like drone delivery services andAdvanced Air Mobility, how are they going to participate? I think it is important that all users are contributing to the system, ensuring that the resources are there to invest in the system long-term,” he said.
“We need to focus on how we can provide sustainable, predictable funding that gives the agency what it needs to plan, it provides the industry the certainty that it wants to see that investments will be made and services will be provided, and both of those are essential for the long-term health of the air traffic system.”