---
title: "Airport Manager"
description: "Runs a public-use airport, overseeing safety, operations, leases, budgets, federal grants and relations with airlines, tenants and the community."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/airport-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Airport Manager

**Category:** Transportation and Material Moving · **SOC code:** 53-2022 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 53-2022.00

Runs a public-use airport, overseeing safety, operations, leases, budgets, federal grants and relations with airlines, tenants and the community.

Also advertised as: Airport Director; Airport Executive Director; Aviation Director; Assistant Airport Manager; General Aviation Airport Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $56,850 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $27.33/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $35,870 to $102,120, with the middle half between $42,000 and $77,340
- **Total US employment:** 15,190
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +7.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 51/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 15,190 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $35,870 |
| 25th | $42,000 |
| 50th (median) | $56,850 |
| 75th | $77,340 |
| 90th | $102,120 |
| Mean (average) | $63,610 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| KY | $123,290 | $136,747 | 290 |
| WA | $84,050 | $78,542 | 150 |
| AL | $78,590 | $88,479 | Not published by BLS |
| AZ | $77,570 | $77,048 | 160 |
| CO | $77,500 | $75,205 | 70 |
| OR | $75,130 | $72,687 | 50 |
| VA | $72,250 | $71,461 | 280 |
| AK | $71,510 | $69,862 | 160 |
| NM | $69,090 | $74,925 | 50 |
| GA | $66,790 | $69,361 | 340 |
| CA | $62,600 | $56,539 | 1,660 |
| ID | $62,510 | $65,460 | 40 |
| MI | $61,780 | $64,209 | 440 |
| NV | $61,350 | $61,363 | 150 |
| TX | $60,910 | $62,757 | 1,310 |

21 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 36 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/airport-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/airport-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 15,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 16,500 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,200 jobs, or +7.8%. Much faster than average: 7.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Long-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 50.9% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 33.8% |
| Some College Courses | 14.7% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 0.6% |

## What the work involves

- Oversee airfield inspections and compliance with FAA airport certification requirements
- Prepare operating and capital budgets and set rates for tenants and users
- Apply for and administer FAA Airport Improvement Program grants
- Negotiate leases and operating agreements with airlines, fixed-base operators and hangar tenants
- Direct emergency response planning and drills with fire, police and medical partners
- Present plans and projects to airport boards, city councils and the public
- Supervise operations, maintenance and security staff

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Transportation — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Telecommunications — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.07 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.93 |
| R — Realistic | 4.53 |
| I — Investigative | 3.54 |
| S — Social | 3.18 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 88.2 |
| ISTJ | 83.4 |
| ISFJ | 73.0 |
| ESFJ | 72.2 |
| ESTP | 65.4 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Airfield Operations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airfield-operations-specialist) — median $56,850
- [Air Traffic Controller](https://nuecareer.com/careers/air-traffic-controller) — median $148,080
- [Aircraft Cargo Handling Supervisor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aircraft-cargo-handling-supervisor) — median $58,170
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840
- [Commercial Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-pilot) — median $123,220
- [Airline Pilot](https://nuecareer.com/careers/airline-pilot) — median $232,140
- [Aviation Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aviation-inspector) — median $92,100
- [Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-storage-and-distribution-manager) — median $107,230
- [Railroad Conductor and Yardmaster](https://nuecareer.com/careers/railroad-conductor-and-yardmaster) — median $78,000
- [Flight Attendant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/flight-attendant) — median $63,580

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/airport-manager