Latest news with #airportmanagement
Washington Post
20-05-2025
- Washington Post
FAA extends flight limits at Newark airport into June because of controller shortage and tech issues
The flight restrictions that have been in place at New Jersey's largest airport ever since air traffic controllers first lost their radar and radios briefly last month will remain in place into June, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Tuesday. The interim rule will cap the number of arrivals and departures at Newark Liberty International Airport at 28 apiece per hour. That's in line with the limits imposed after about half a dozen controllers went on a 45-day trauma leave following the first outage on April 28 .
Forbes
12-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
From Music To Metrics: How Dubai Airports Found Its Rhythm Under Paul Griffiths
Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths poses for a photograph after an interview with The Associated ... More Press at the Dubai Air Show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. Passenger numbers at Dubai International Airport this year will eclipse the pre-pandemic passenger figures in 2019, showing the strong rebound in travel after the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns that grounded aircraft worldwide, Griffiths said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Jon Gambrell) It's rare that a conversation with a CEO leaves you moved. But speaking with Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, concert organist and former right hand to Richard Branson, felt less like an interview and more like a quiet masterclass in leadership. One that didn't rely on corporate polish or high-octane bravado. One rooted instead in clarity. Not just as a style but as a stance. When you speak to Griffiths, what stands out isn't just what he says but the space he gives for others to be part of the story. He leads one of the most complex operations on earth yet speaks with the rhythm of someone who has spent years listening before speaking. Griffiths didn't take the conventional path to the C-suite. 'I came into airport management through a very traditional route—I trained to be a cathedral organist,' he quips, English wit fully intact. Music was his first love. But when he shared his dreams with his father, a musician himself, he got a dose of hard truth: 'It's a beautiful passion but a hard profession.' So he pivoted, studied computer science and began building software for the airline industry. That unexpected fusion of creativity and logic became a signature strength. He's performed at St Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and St John's, Smith Square in London. In 2019 he played the organ at the Papal Mass in Abu Dhabi during Pope Francis' historic visit. 'Running an airport is like playing in an orchestra,' he told me. 'You're accountable for the whole performance but only control a small part. The magic comes from alignment.' It's a philosophy he's translated not only into culture but into productivity. Dubai Airports today is six times more productive than when he joined in 2007, moving over 92 million passengers with fewer than half the employees per capita it once had. That word lingered with me: alignment. Because alignment, done well, is never forced. It's earned. One of Griffiths' defining leadership leaps came in the early days of Virgin Atlantic. He had built an airline software suite and pitched it to an eccentric startup founder who 'didn't wear a tie, had a beard and said he was buying a 747 to fly to New York.' That man was Richard Branson. 'I thought he was starting small. He wasn't. And that audacity—it was electrifying,' Griffiths said. Branson bought the software, then invited Paul onto the board as Commercial Director. But it wasn't just Branson's ambition that stuck. It was his disdain for hierarchy. 'He treated everyone as equal. If he didn't like the answer from leadership, he'd ask the baggage handler,' Griffiths said. 'He believed good ideas could come from anywhere.' It reminded me how much leadership is about presence not pretense. Too many leaders today are chasing polish when they should be building trust. Branson's greatest gift wasn't charisma. It was access. He made people feel seen. Griffiths has carried that legacy forward. When he arrived at Dubai Airports, the challenge was clear. The airport was unprepared for Emirates' expansion. The structure was outdated. Talent was thin. His first move? Be honest and rebuild from the inside out. 'We needed talent we didn't yet have. That meant bringing in people from the outside, unpopular but necessary,' he said. 'And my chairman gave me the air cover to do it.' That chairman is His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, also behind Emirates Airlines, Dubai Holding and Dubai World. His backing allowed Griffiths to make bold structural changes and reset the tone. In this June 17, 2014, photo, Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths, a 56-year-old Briton, plays a ... More church organ at his villa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Now that he's had a taste of running the world's busiest air hub for international passengers, Griffiths is determined to hang on to the honor while setting his sights on an even bigger prize: beating Atlanta for the title of busiest airport on the planet. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) Then came a second, longer play: invest in local leadership. Griffiths launched a graduate training program to rotate Emirati nationals through departments. Fifteen years later, 78 percent of his senior team are UAE nationals. And they earned it. 'We didn't helicopter people to the top of the mountain,' he said. 'They climbed it. And when you climb it, you stand taller.' As an executive coach I often speak about earned identity. Griffiths lives it. Culture isn't about slogans. It's about systems. Inclusion isn't just who's invited to the table. It's how they got there. Griffiths takes employee listening seriously. Not as a survey checkbox but as an obligation. Dubai Airports has used Gallup's engagement science for years not just for feedback but for truth-telling. 'You should never survey people unless you're fully committed to act on what you hear,' he said. 'We've used the data to pinpoint what needs fixing and then we fix it.' That candor matters. Engagement isn't a soft measure. It's a strategic one. And when leaders act on what they learn, trust deepens. So does advocacy. So does performance. 'The results speak for themselves,' he said. 'Better business outcomes, happier teams, higher retention. You can feel it when you walk the floor.' I've said this before—if culture doesn't move from insight to action, it's just decoration. Griffiths embodies that. In the early days of the pandemic, when airports went silent, Griffiths turned to music. 'Together with Colin Clark, then an Emirates cabin crew member, I recorded a piece by Gabriel Fauré for cello and piano,' he wrote on LinkedIn. 'We set up inside the empty terminal, where the music felt like a quiet tribute to everything that had been interrupted and everything we hoped would soon return.' It wasn't just a performance. It was presence. A way of helping people make sense of the stillness. In that moment, leadership wasn't about control. It was about care. About reminding people, musically and gently, that some things endure. Ask Griffiths about the future and he won't talk about terminals. He'll talk about experience. About flow. 'Too many architects build airports for themselves not for the traveler,' he said. 'My dream is intimacy at scale.' He envisions distributed passenger nodes, each with its own gates, shops and lounges. Less queuing. Less distance. 'Why should anyone walk a mile to get to their gate?' he asks. 'That's not a design win. That's a design failure.' Griffiths believes airports should feel like hospitality spaces not bureaucratic ones. And he's backing that belief with technology. From AI-enabled service to predictive analytics, the aim is speed without losing touch. 'Imagine a service agent with an earpiece,' he said. 'You ask a question—what gate, what food—and AI responds in real time. The human connection stays. But now it's informed.' This is where I believe leadership must hold its ground. AI can accelerate decisions but it must never displace humanity. We need more empathy not less. More presence not proxies. Griffiths models this balance. Griffiths calls himself both left-brain and right-brain. It's not a claim. It's an edge. He's a systems thinker who hires for spark. 'I don't want conventional. I want interesting,' he told me. So he hired an aerobatic pilot from the Royal Air Force to lead airport operations. Not a culture fit. A culture shift. 'People who've done hard things tend to lead with discipline and creativity,' he said. That tension is the point. 'The world is not made up entirely of accountants. You've got to have creative people working together to shake things up.' As leaders we often filter out the weird and the wonderful. Griffiths seeks it out. Not as quirk but as advantage. As we wrapped our conversation, I asked Paul a question I had specifically designed for him. If leadership were like playing a complex instrument, what's the note you're always trying to hit? 'Harmony,' he said. 'Because it's the sound of people aligned not in uniformity but in unity. It's different parts moving in different directions creating something beautiful together.' That idea isn't abstract. It's operational. It's how he builds. He has guided Dubai Airports through explosive growth, a global shutdown and a reimagining of what travel can look like. But perhaps his most lasting contribution isn't scale. It's trust. Inside the organization, people know where they stand. They know why their work matters. And they know someone is paying attention. Because the kind of leadership that endures isn't the loudest. It's the one that listens, that aligns and then lets people do what they were built to do. That's the legacy Paul Griffiths is shaping at Dubai Airports. One decision, one story, one person at a time — all moving together in time with one beat.
