New Pittsburgh Airport is the Culmination of a Decade-Long Shift in Thinking

This year will mark the completion of the new Pittsburgh International Airport, which will be a model for the industry and a guidepost for the community’s future.

It also marks a decade since Christina Cassotis came to lead the team at the Allegheny County Airport Authority with a vision of what Pittsburgh’s then-struggling airport could be.

“Christina wanted to be a global leader in aviation and innovation, so from there, she had trained everybody, including me to think out of the box,” said David Minnotte, ACAA board chairman.

“I think this airport especially in the last 10 years really does punch above its weight when it comes to innovation,” said Jeff Fegan, former CEO of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The ongoing expansion of air service alone would be a proving point of how far Pittsburgh International Airport has come. In 2024, PIT reported its highest yearly passenger total in almost two decades with 9.95 million total passengers, surpassing 2019’s figure of 9.8 million by over 166,000 passengers.

As CEO, Cassotis is the catalyst for other ways the airport has been reimagined – in workforce development, energy innovation and sensory services, for example.

“Christina Cassotis’ leadership has been absolutely instrumental in driving a lot of the innovation that has occurred,” said Matt Smith, vice chairman of the ACAA board and Chief Growth Officer of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development.

“Leadership at the airport not only wanted to build a new terminal, they wanted to make sure that it impacted the community around them. I have never seen an airport create apprenticeships programs and look at workforce the way the airport does,” said Rob Cherry, CEO of Partner4Work, which partnered on the PIT2Work pre-apprenticeship program at the airport.

“We are the comeback story and people are noticing, and I think that’s huge, and we did it with a team, we did it with a community, and we did it when people didn’t think we could,” said Cassotis.