Last landing

Phillip Cummings retires after 29 years with the Coeur d’Alene Airport

HAYDEN — For the past 29 years, Mary Hopkins has worked with Phillip Cummings at the Coeur d’Alene Airport.

As the airport’s administrative assistant, she, perhaps more than anyone, understands his value to the airport’s success.

“He’s lived and breathed the airport,” she said. “We’ve worked here together so long, he’s family.”

Cummings is the guy going out in the middle of the night to stop someone from stealing an airplane.

He’s the one fixing a gate after a vehicle crashed through it.

He’s the person checking the runways on winter mornings to clear deer or coyotes.

Cummings did all these things, Hopkins said, “countless times.”

“He’s a huge asset,” she said. “He’s going to be missed so much. It’s going to be really different without him.”

A retirement party for Cummings on Wednesday attracted a crowd of well-wishers and friends. They praised him, joked with him and about him, swapped stories with him and shared cake and drink, too, at the Coeur d’Alene Airport office.

“So, how does it feel?” asked Doug Parker.

“It will feel better Friday when it’s official,” a smiling Cummings answered. “That’s my last working day.”

Parker said that for years, he’s flown in and out of the airport and Cummings has been a constant. Always there. Always ready.

“This guy’s done me a lot of favors,” he said. “We’re going to miss him so much. He’s just unreal.”

As Cummings sits down, he reflects on his career with airports that included 7 1/2 years in Alaska before taking off and landing in North Idaho.

He’s proud of his contributions to the Coeur d’Alene Airport, also known as Pappy Boyington Field, that generates more than $100 million for Kootenai County’s economy.

“I was a mechanic when I started here,” he said amidst the hum of airplanes buzzing overhead, noting the date of Oct. 10, 1991.

He was named the deputy director in 2000 and has twice served temporarily as manager.

“It’s been a good job. I’ve enjoyed working for Kootenai County,” he said. “We’re the front door to a beautiful part of the country.”

It’s a small crew, fewer than 10, at the airport, located on 1,100 acres, a few miles north of Coeur d’Alene.

The airport has two runways and an on-site weather observation system. It practices state-of-the-art snow removal techniques and is a certified weather alternate for Spokane International Airport.

From plowing snow to repairing equipment to welding, everyone pitches in and does a little bit of everything, Cummings said.

He takes pride in being part of the airport’s rising role in North Idaho aviation.

“That’s one of the best things, to walk into an airport that’s growing like this and be able to be part of that development,” he said.

The average annual taxpayer investment in the airport is about $275,000, he said, while it generates around $50 million in employment revenue in the county.

“That’s a pretty sizable contribution,” he said. “You see those things develop and grow, bringing Empire Airlines in here, that’s where our market really is.”

He believes the Coeur d’Alene Airport will eventually have commuter flights and large aircraft, 737s and 757s, can and have landed there.

“But that’s all economics,” he said. “It will come some day.”

Primarily, it’s smaller and medium-sized aircraft, private, government and commercial, that use the airport on a daily basis.

“We have a pretty diverse mix of aircraft,” he said.

He said the Coeur d’Alene Airport is the second-busiest in the state of Idaho based on the number of operations, which is takeoffs and landings.

He laughed as he recalled that some said the airport would never break 60,000 operations.

“We were at 87,000, 25,000 more than what they said we’ve never break,” he said.

All those takeoffs and landing require a lot of work on the ground.

Cummings is the guy who makes sure things that need to be done, get done, because lives are at stake.

“Our job is to maintain that piece of ground that people come back to earth on,” he said.

Come winter, that job gets demanding.

He said if slush is left on a highway and an icy ridge freezes at night, it’s not a big deal.

“You can’t do that on a runaway,” he said.

Planes are landing at 100 to 110 mph, and their tires are filled with nitrogen at 140 PSI.

“If they catch a frozen slush ridge at night they’ll be out in the snow,” Cummings said. “It will pull them right off the runway.”

Cummings, who lives in Rathdrum and owns property in Alaska, plans to spend more time with family, including two granddaughters, in retirement.

He called it a privilege to work with people and planes for nearly four decades.

“After 36 years of doing something, it’s just time to move on,” he said. “That’s the one constant in life is change. It’s time for me to go and do something different.”

If Cummings has one regret, it’s that the Coeur d’Alene Airport doesn’t get the credit it deserves from the general public.

“They really have no concept for what this airport does for North Idaho, let alone Kootenai County,” he said. “To the average person, unless they fly, an airport is just foreign to them because they don’t deal with it. It is what it is, that’s the nature of the beast.”

An airport, he added, is “a unique animal, and very much underappreciated.”

Much like Phillip Cummings.