August 9, 2023
By: Dwayne Page
The City of Smithville has a new airport manager.
Chelsea H. Jones was recently hired to succeed Katelyn Sanders who left for another career move.
Jones attended Monday night’s regular monthly meeting of the Smithville Mayor and Aldermen.
After the meeting, Mayor Josh Miller and Alderman Shawn Jacobs, the city’s representative on the airport advisory committee, told WJLE that Jones is a good fit for this position.
“Chelsea came highly recommended from the city airport committee. She is a graduate of MTSU and has even done some teaching there. She has been here for about a month and its working out very well,” said Mayor Miller.
“We formed a search committee for a new airport manager, and it so happened that Chelsea was the recommendation of all members of the search committee. She came very highly recommended so at that point we began reaching out to her knowing she would be a good candidate. We were very fortunate that she accepted the job. She has been doing a great job. I am not an aviation expert but being the city’s representative on the board I am very pleased with her,” said Alderman Jacobs.
Jones, a resident of Murfreesboro, has an education background in aviation. She earned her bachelor’s degree B.S. in Aerospace Administration in the fall of 2018 and a Master of Science M.S. in Aviation Safety and Security in the fall of 2020. Prior to college, Jones attended Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro where she graduated with Honors in 2014.
“I spent the last three years as a full-time lecturer for MTSU’s aerospace department and I loved every minute of it,” said Jones. “I was able to get a lot of great experience and meet a lot of great people there and hopefully influence some of the future aviation personnel which is very rewarding. Before I settled down into a long-term career, I did want to pursue what my original degrees were for. I have a bachelor’s degree in airline management, and I have a master’s degree in aviation safety and security. I really wanted to get out on the industry experience side itself which is why I decided to take a step back from the education field and instead go more toward the airport side,” Jones explained.
Asked why she chose Smithville for a career move, Jones said she learned about the job from a friend. She also has a family connection here. “My grandmother grew up in Smithville, so this city came highly recommended to me, and I met a couple of local people here around Smithville that highly recommended the position for me which is how I learned of the job. One of my friends, Christopher Thomas, who was born and raised here is the first one who informed me of the position. He said that Smithville was a very nice city, that this was a very nice airport, and that they (city) were looking for a new manager. I was already looking as well. When it comes to managerial roles, they don’t really crop up too often within airports themselves, so I was eager to jump at this opportunity,” said Jones.
Chelsea said she is already enjoying her new job and is impressed with the airport operation here. “I have spent just over a month in the new position. It has been an extremely beneficial move on my part. I have learned and grown a lot as an aviation employee. It’s a nice little municipal airport. It’s a smaller airport which I am happy to be part of because anything larger I think would have been somewhat overwhelming for me as a first-time airport manager. I did have some part time experience. I worked at the Smyrna airport for about two years part time so there I got a lot of behind-the-scenes experience and some managerial experience with that role. That helped the transition for me to be a little bit smoother. I have gotten to wear a lot of different hats that I would otherwise never have gotten to wear If I had stayed at MTSU itself. I am still teaching part time at MTSU so I can still keep my foot in the door and help teach some of the future aviation personnel again. It has been a really rewarding experience and I am very happy to be here,” said Jones.
“When it comes to the goals for this airport, we are in the process of trying to get a tree obstruction removal project going on, cutting through the last of the red tape to finally get that in progress and we are hoping over the next couple of years to potentially add more hangar space. Hangars are in very high demand right now in the aviation community and if we were able to get our hands on a nice grant to cover a lot of that funding, then those hangars would be filled up pretty much instantaneously. We have a pretty long waiting list right now and it would be great on the airport’s part to build that up a little bit and bring more revenue to the city and grow the airport while still keeping that nice little municipality feel to it,” said Jones.