United Airlines’ first female Denver manager oversees fast-growing hub

Jonna McGrath is the primary lady to move United Airways’ operations at Denver Worldwide Airport, taking cost throughout a $2.1 billion overhaul of the airport’s terminal and hovering progress for each the airport and the corporate.

McGrath, a 35-year veteran of the airline, oversees United’s fastest-growing hub. Since 2019, United, the airport’s dominant provider, has seen a roughly 30% improve in gate capability and an 18% improve within the variety of passengers in Denver.

United accounted for almost 50% of DIA’s passengers in February. The airline is logging 464 flights a time out of Denver and expects to exceed 500 this summer season.

General, DIA had its busiest yr ever in 2023, with 77.8 million passengers flying to, from and thru Denver, up 12.3% from 2022.

In February, the airline opened a $145 million addition to its flight coaching middle on a 23-acre campus in northeast Denver. United says the middle is the most important of its form. Final yr, the corporate opened two United golf equipment in Denver, together with the airline’s largest membership on this planet.

McGrath anticipates the tempo of progress to proceed.

“Denver is nice as a result of we’ve room to develop. We’ll go as much as 90 gates by the tip of this yr. We’re now at 82,” McGrath mentioned.

United has room to increase close to the airport as nicely after shopping for 113 acres of land within the space final yr. Airline officers have mentioned among the area shall be used for one more flight-training facility and different buildings. The land buy has raised hypothesis that United may finally transfer its headquarters from Chicago to Denver.

“That’s a query I get on a regular basis,” McGrath mentioned with amusing. “Now we have no plans proper now. We’ve been invested in Chicago over many, a few years.”

However the land offers United choices because it strikes ahead, she added.

Upward trajectory

McGrath took over as vice chairman of United’s airport operations in Denver in July 2023. About 4,000 United staff work at DIA. The airline’s whole workforce in Colorado is roughly 10,000.

“Denver was at all times on my checklist of the place I needed to finish up some day,” McGrath mentioned. “I knew I needed to be nearer to house.”

McGrath grew up within the Deadwood space within the Black Hills of South Dakota. She joined United as a frontline employee in 1989 in Speedy Metropolis, S.D. Her household ran the marina at Pactola Lake and had a marine and sports activities store.

“I used to be a single mother. I had a 1-year-old child, and I offered a ship to the supervisor of United in Speedy Metropolis. He provided me a part-time job, and I assumed, ‘oh, that’s a cool approach to have the ability to journey and see the world.’ So I assumed I’d do it for a few years,”

McGrath labored on the Speedy Metropolis airport for 5 years, dealing with just about all of the totally different duties: engaged on the ramp, deicing planes, dispatching plane, pulling up the jet bridge and loading luggage and prospects.

From there, McGrath transferred to Minneapolis, the place she labored “above the wing,” or in customer support. Every part outdoors is “under the wing.” She went from being a frontline employee to a supervisor after which the supervisor for United on the Minneapolis airport. She was there for 11 years.

McGrath then went to United’s headquarters in Chicago to work as a enterprise analyst in data know-how. The corporate was growing a brand new pc system for the frontline brokers. She mentioned she didn’t know the “technical stuff.”

“However I understood the job as a result of I’d labored on the entrance line for a few years, and I skilled on our system that we had been engaged on,” McGrath. “My job was to inform them what we would have liked the system to do to greatest serve our prospects.”

When she talks to United staff, particularly different girls, McGrath mentioned she advises folks to take dangers and study new issues.

“My first danger was after I went to Minneapolis. I used to be a single mother and I made a decision that I needed a profession with United, so I took that leap of religion and moved someplace new,” McGrath mentioned.

Different stops alongside the way in which earlier than touchdown in Denver included managing United’s operations at airports in Miami, Orlando and Tampa in Florida, and Seattle and Los Angeles. Throughout that point, McGrath mentioned the variety of girls in management positions at United has grown.

“I nonetheless sit in rooms the place there aren’t plenty of females, however it’s rising. Over my 35 years, that progress is noticeable,” McGrath mentioned. “Since my announcement as (vice chairman) in Denver, we’ve had two extra feminine VP bulletins in airport operations.”

McGrath believes United acknowledges that ladies can carry a special perspective to the job. “It doesn’t at all times must be that very same group of males who’ve at all times adopted that monitor or have executed that job.”

Throughout a United occasion for Girls’s Historical past Month, McGrath instructed a crowd at a gate on DIA’s B concourse about rising up in a household that was entrepreneurial. As an adolescent, she did the books for the household enterprise.

McGrath mentioned she has additionally at all times seemed for alternatives within the office. “At any time when they mentioned we’re on the lookout for folks to take this job, tackle this venture, I raised my hand as a result of I needed to study extra.”