A record 4.2 million Americans will turn 65 this year — and that means manyof them will be heading for retirement. Every industry will feel that impact and ours will feel it sharply. Airport management requires astute institutional knowledge — FAA grant compliance, airfield safety standards, 24/7 operational judgment — and a workforce that has been built over decades.
That’s hard to replace.
Here at the Indianapolis Airport Authority (IAA), we manage Indianapolis International (IND) and its general aviation facilities in Central Indiana. More than a quarter of our workforce is eligible to retire by 2027.
That number got our attention early and forced the hard question: “How do we build a pipeline of talent long before the vacancy ever appears — one deep and broad enough to protect the operational and customer service excellence IND is known for?”
Traditional recruiting couldn’t answer that question because traditional approaches don’t reach the average eighth grader who is already determining high-school course loads and choosing colleges and career pathways. Many of those students often don’t know the aviation field includes engineers, cybersecurity analysts, sustainability specialists and human resource professionals in addition to pilots and mechanics.
We needed a pipeline built a decade before an opening ever existed.
Building a Workforce Pipeline Through Partnerships
We made a deliberate choice to treat workforce development as a core strategic function, not a reactive or side initiative and to invest across the entire educational pipeline rather than concentrating all our effort at the college level.
Our 12-week paid summer internship program for undergraduates is a good example of “depth over numbers.”
Rather than simply growing headcount, we doubled our intern class from 12 to 24 over two years and deliberately pushed the program into IAA departments that had never hosted interns before, including cybersecurity and public safety. This year’s class represents 14 universities and 17 areas of study — a mix built on purpose. A broad pipeline produces a broad workforce.
We also moved earlier in the pipeline than most employers are willing to go through partnerships with high school work-based learning programs that target potential first generation college students and students from alternative high schools. IAA was an early supporter of the Indiana Career Apprenticeship Pathway program (INCAP). This program places Central Indiana high school students in paid, hands-on roles while they complete their coursework and earn industry credentials. Additionally, students at Providence Cristo Rey College and Career Preparatory High School spend one day a week working directly with IAA departments. We have also expanded efforts to reach students with physical differences or special needs through a new partnership with Damar Charter Academy.
In 2026, we added partnerships with Junior Achievement of Central Indiana through its CareerIgnite program. That initiative connects high schoolers with airport-management professions and ties in with its JobSpark program, which introduces middle schoolers to aviation careers through a hands-on expo, well before they’re choosing a high school course load. At the graduate and upper-undergraduate level, we participate in the Indiana University Peterson and McKinney Climate Fellowship programs and the Orr Fellowship program. These programs offer students an opportunity to engage in sustainability and public service work tied directly to airport operations.
Soaring Into the Headwinds
In 2025 alone, IAA participated in 37 workforce development events throughout Indiana and hosted more than 440 students on airport tours. But the numbers that matter most to us are the ones downstream of that activity.
Fifteen former interns now hold full-time positions at IND, several in leadership roles. These are people our program identified years ago, developed into professionals and converted into long-term employees.
For example, Morgan Wilson, while a high school student participating in the inaugural INCAP class, supported key IAA human resource initiatives. As a result, she was named a 2023 Work-Based Learner of the Year Award finalist by Work and Learn Indiana — and has stayed with IAA while pursuing her human resource degree. That is a direct return on investment in a student before she even had a high school diploma. Since 2020, the Peterson Fellowship has brought more than 16 fellows through IAA as well, many of whom have gone on to public-sector careers, including one fellow who now works full time at the IAA.
That track record has started to draw attention beyond Indianapolis.
On June 16, 2026, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon visited IND to learn about our workforce development program firsthand. And this year, IAA was recognized by the National Association of Colleges and Employers with one of its highest individual honors for employer side recruiting. Our program has also been recognized by EmployIndy, the TechPoint Foundation for Youth and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
How Other Airports Can Thrive and Fly
None of this required a bigger budget than most airport human resource departments already have — it required forward thinking instead. Three takeaways stand out for other airports facing the same demographic cliff:
Start earlier than feels necessary. If your pipeline begins at the college internship stage, it begins too late. Middle school career expos and high school apprenticeships build awareness of airport careers before students have ruled them out.
Recruit for breadth, not just headcount. Doubling our intern class mattered less than diversifying the departments,
universities and fields of study behind it. A pipeline that only reaches one type of student skillset will only produce one type of workforce.
Treat partnerships as infrastructure. Our relationships with Indianapolis Public Schools, Providence Cristo Rey, Junior Achievement, Indiana University and Work and Learn Indiana and many others didn’t happen overnight. They require the same sustained investment and accountability we’d give any other critical system at the airport.
The airports that come through this impending silver tsunami strongest will be the ones that started building relationships today with their future workforce.
The next generation of airport leaders is already out there — in an eighth-grade classroom, a high school apprenticeship, a graduate fellowship — waiting for someone to show them this industry exists. We won’t know the full return on this work for another decade — that’s the nature of an investment made in a 15-year-old. But every apprentice, intern and fellow who stays is proof the model works.