Lambert International is slated for a multi-billion-dollar update. Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge will overseeing it all.

by Alexa Beatty / portraits by Kate Munsch

Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge says the best view of her life, the one she loves most of all, is from the control tower at Lambert Field. It is especially beautiful at night. “The lights!” The view from her desk isn’t shabby either: the runway, the slow glide of planes into dock, sun glinting off silvery wings.

“It’s never not exciting to me.”

You can tell. There’s glee in the eyes of this elegantly imposing 65-year-old grandmother of five. She beams to tell the tale of her rise up the ranks — from customer service agent at Ozark Airlines to where she is now: director of the 34th largest airport in America (in terms of passengers per year). There are 457 in total.

Lambert International Director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge.

You can tell she lives and breathes her work. Although initially, it was the last thing she had in mind. “I was thinking about the CIA and went to school to study German language and literature. A foreign language seemed like a good idea.”

But during the lengthy and intense CIA process, that entry level position at Ozark Airlines at LaGuardia popped up. “I needed a job and thought it might be fun,” Hamm-Niebruegge said. It was. “Every day was a puzzle. It started out nice and neat, got torn apart, then was back together by the end of the day. Delays, cancellations, late passengers, mechanical issues, etcetera.”

When TWA purchased Ozark in October of 1986, Hamm-Niebruegge — already pegged as a high performer fit for a management position — moved to St. Louis to become administrative supervisor of ramp services. Two years after that, she moved “up above the wing” to managing director of passenger services overseeing, among many other things, ticket counter processing and passenger check-in.

Lambert International Airport T1 Domes with FAA Tower.

She was made managing director of TWA’s Eastern Region (35 airports in total) in 1995, becoming Vice President of TWA’s North American Hub in 1997. “This meant that any TWA operation in North America (101 airports) was my responsibility.”

In 2001, when American Airlines bought TWA, Hamm-Niebruegge was on the integration team to incorporate all TWA operations into the AA system. That complex process took two full years and mostly involved ensuring that all TWA employees had the opportunity to keep their jobs. Two years later, she accepted the position of managing director of AA Hub Operations at Lambert.

But over the next six years, flights out of Lambert Field started to decrease. By 2009, the number was down from 460 a day to 95. Hamm-Niebruegge said this slow descent was hard to watch. “It was depressing not to be growing but shrinking.”

In June of that year, she announced she would be stepping away from her role. She had no specific plans for what she would do next; nor did she expect that Francis Slay, St. Louis Mayor at the time, would be calling to invite her for coffee. “He wanted to know if I had any interest in bringing the airport back up; if I would consider [the mayor-appointed] position of Airport Director.”

Slay clearly knew what was best for the airport; the running of a vital economic engine needed just the right hand. “We generate 5.5 percent of the regional GDP,” Hamm-Niebruegge said. “We have a $6.1 billion economic impact to the state.” An airport is big business, in other words; a not-for-profit public entity which generates as much revenue as possible to offset operational costs.

Hamm-Niebruegge plucked a ring binder from a shelf and, like a shopkeeper with her ledger, ran her finger down her sources of revenue. She listed off terminal rental rates, a percentage of all concessions sales, income from garages and extended stay lots; and airline landing fees, which are calculated based on the air frame weight of each plane. This fee, she said, is currently $5.75 per 1,000 pounds of airframe (minus cargo and passengers). Considering that a 747 weighs 370,816 pounds (and doing a little math), she said that income amounts to around $2,100 each time a plane of that size touches down. All told, landing fees account for around $6.7 million in revenue each year, she said.

And gradually, under her watch, the number of flights and passengers are on the rise. Sixteen million people took off from Lambert last year, up from 10 million in 2003. (O’Hare and Atlanta numbers are 80 and 100 million respectively).

“The best part of my job is being able to collaborate with the community and help grow the region. An airport can only grow if the region grows,” Hamm-Niebruegge said. In 2015, Southwest Airlines made St. Louis a focus city, filling the void left by American Airlines. The airport is now Southwest’s tenth largest market. “It’s a significant milestone.”

Without question, Hamm-Niebruegge is a visionary. Under her watch, the airport is set to undergo a vast transformation. She has received approval from the airlines to spend the first $1 billion – raised in rates and charges – on the first of two phases. While preserving the airport’s historic Minoru Yamasaki dome windows and the ticket lobby (which will be 100 percent renovated), the two existing terminals will be raised to become one. Hamm-Niebruegge said she hopes the western half will open for business by the end of 2028; the eastern portion by the end of 2031.

Lambert International Airport proposed new terminal rendering.

Hamm-Niebruegge receives news of important airport events via an alert box in her office ceiling. It could be a burst tire or any number of minor day-to-day events. Not all demand her attention, but some — like the Good Friday tornado of 2011 — certainly do. That storm ripped across Lambert Field, blowing out the glass in those Yamasaki domes and destroying the C-Concourse roof. There was $38 million-worth of damages. Although she closed the airport that night, she opened for arriving flights the very next evening. The airport was fully operational by Tuesday.

Hamm-Niebruegge is a glamorous woman and there have been glamorous sides to her career at the airport. Although she hasn’t much memory of the filming of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” in 1987, she does — strangely enough — recall “Up in the Air,” and how George Clooney happened to use her conference room as a place to take his breaks. When pumped for a few juicy details, she mentioned something about the actor’s height. “...But I’m very tall,” she said.

There’s a coffee table in Rhonda’s office, but there’s no coffee being had: It’s the only place left to put her awards. They jostle for space, each one shinier than the next, each one speaking in one way or another to achievement, influence and leadership. But Hamm-Niebruegge is also a woman of small pleasures: About once a month she takes a little walk up to the tower to check on her controllers, to look at her view. It’s an inspiring visual: Morning, noon, but preferably night — Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, up there in the window, queen of all she surveys.

Queen of the Night