Although 70 applicants from across the country applied to be the next manager of the Heber City Municipal Airport, the person approved had local experience that set him apart. Adam Bunker was promoted after more than three years as the airport’s assistant manager. He was nominated by Mayor Hei di Franco and confirmed by the Heber City Council on Tuesday. Bunker, 25, grew up obsessed with aviation, in no small part because his father was a naval engineer. As a kid, he devoured all the books in the aviation section of his elementary school library. When he started attending Utah Valley University in 2021, Bunker wanted to be a pilot, but he switched programs and completed a bachelor’s degree in airport management. Then, he earned a master’s degree in engineering technology from the university because he was interested in the business and technological aspects of airport management. Bunker began his professional career as an airport operations specialist at Spanish Fork Municipal Airport in 2022. He joined the Heber City Municipal Airport in 2023 as assistant airport manager, overseeing day-to-day operations, supporting the airport manager by processing permits, attending meetings and community events and ensuring Federal Aviation Administration compliance. “You get a little taste of everything. You might have to wear sunscreen and Carhartts to work one day, and then a suit to work the next,” he said. “There’s grounds maintenance. There are labor-intensive projects that you get to see go through and participate in, and then there’s also political and process and admin stuff. … I don’t think there’s very many jobs with this variety or this amount of creative problem solving.” Bunker has served as acting airport manager since early April, when the previous manager, Travis Biggs, left the role.  To help fill the void, the city approved the three-person airport team working more hours than usual. With such a small staff — which Bunker and Franco hope to expand — efficiency matters. Improving productivity at the airport will be Bunker’s top priority stepping into a managerial role. “I plan to invest a little more time into the training of employees. It’s no secret that Heber’s grown, and we’ve had to adapt with it, so I think it’s not really an airport that can be run by one person,” he said. Bunker said many small, municipal airports are stuck in the past when it comes to digitizing information and automating tasks. “If we have a filing cabinet full of leases, there are airports that have let those lapse before, and people haven’t been compliant or haven’t paid in sometimes years,” he said. He said the Heber City Municipal Airport’s workflow has been “notoriously slow” in the past and that there hasn’t been an easy way for the public to get information from Heber City Municipal Airport other than “showing up to the office and asking for someone to print off a piece of paper.” Bunker has implemented his airport management software, Tamarac Technologies, at the Heber City Municipal Airport to help remedy that. The software has been implemented in 15 airports across the country since its launch in 2023. The software compiles all information a manager could need, from leases to contact information, in one place. It also has tools for billing, employee scheduling and communication, task checklists and tracking of hangar leases and insurance to ensure they remain up to date. “I like to think of it as another employee that likes to do all the boring things,” Bunker said. It also has an interactive map of the Heber City Municipal Airport. Bunker and his team are currently building a public-facing version of the map, including hangar space, rates and fees. Bunker hopes that embracing technology at the airport frees up employees to focus on community events and outreach and expanding general aviation, or aviation by civilians, which are Bunker’s other top priorities as manager. There are two common misconceptions about the airport: that it is subsidized by local taxes and only for “the rich and famous,” as Bunker put it. “Odds are it’s your neighbor that’s here, not some guy in Park City that has a seventh house there,” he said. Additionally, grants from the Federal Aviation Administration and Utah Department of Transportation cover about 95% of the airport’s funding, with airport revenue supplying the rest. Bunker wants the Heber City Municipal Airport to become more of an economic and public benefit by adding hangars to support general aviation. “We have a waiting list that’s, I would need to check, but 300 people long that would love to come put a small aircraft here,” he said. “I would love for the community to think of the airport fondly, and also make the airport very accessible for the community.” Franco shares that goal. “We want this to be, like Adam’s saying, an asset for our community, as well as for the next generation of flyers, and for them to be inspired here, just like he was inspired,” she said. The post Heber City Airport’s new manager prioritizes efficiency, community outreach appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less