Courtesy of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport
I recently wrote a letter to people I will never meet.
I don’t know their names. I don’t know what they’ll look like. I don’t know what Atlanta will look like when they read it. I only know that a century from now, they’ll unearth it and discover the story we left behind.
The letter is now inside a time capsule at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where I serve as general manager. It will be buried on the airfield until 2126.
Writing it forced me to think about something I hadn’t quite considered. I spend my days making decisions about an airport I will eventually have to leave behind.
That is the nature of legacy: We build on what others entrusted to us, knowing that one day, we will pass it on to those who come next.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) is closing out its centennial year. In 1925, Atlanta leased an abandoned racetrack and began turning it into an airfield. Today, more than 106 million passengers move through ATL each year.
Courtesy of Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
There are a lot of ways to tell the story of everything that happened between those two facts.
We could talk about runways and terminals. We could talk about becoming the world’s busiest airport. We could talk about the Olympics, the fifth runway, or the billions of dollars in infrastructure that followed.
But buildings don’t explain how a place lasts 100 years. People do.
William B. Hartsfield understood early that aviation could change Atlanta’s future. Maynard H. Jackson Jr. understood that the economic power created here should open doors for people who had historically been shut out. Their names are on this airport.
Most of the people who built it will never have that distinction. They poured concrete and moved bags. They cleaned terminals and repaired equipment. They worked the ramps, opened businesses, guided aircraft, and helped strangers find their gates. Some spent their entire careers here. Others were here only long enough to leave their piece of ATL a little better than they found it. That’s how you get from an abandoned racetrack to the world’s busiest airport. One person. Then another. Then another. This year made that especially clear to me.
Atlanta welcomed the world for the FIFA World Cup Games while the everyday work of ATL continued around it. Flights still arrived. Bags still moved. Families still traveled. Construction continued. Millions of passengers continued moving through the airport. For the people who work here, history rarely announces itself. More often, it takes shape in the work they do every day.
That’s one reason our centennial recognition of 1 in 100 really mattered to me. We recognized people from across the Airport: longtime employees, difference makers, emerging leaders, and people whose work happens largely outside the spotlight. They represent only a fraction of the people who make ATL work.
Each generation gets its piece of ATL’s story. The question is what we do with ours.
Mine happens to come with the responsibility of leading ATL at a moment when we’re preparing it for another century. We are widening Concourse D while passengers continue moving through it. We are making investments in technology, infrastructure and the passenger experience that won’t reach their full value during my tenure. Some of the decisions we’re making today will make more sense to the person sitting in this chair years from now than those watching us make them. That’s part of the job.
I know because we inherited decisions too. Generations before us made room for an Atlanta they couldn’t fully see yet. They built ahead. They took risks. They made mistakes. They adjusted. And eventually, they handed us an airport that had grown far beyond the airfield they first imagined.
Now we must decide what we’re handing forward.
Courtesy of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
That responsibility doesn’t stop at the edge of the airport. ATL and Atlanta have grown up together. The airport has created jobs, businesses, and economic opportunities across this region, and Atlanta’s growth has pushed ATL to continue its ascension. During our Centennial, our employees took that relationship beyond the terminal through 100 Hours for 100 Years, volunteering throughout metro Atlanta. That’s part of what I wanted the people of 2126 to understand about us.
The letter I put in that capsule tells them who we are today and who we hope they will become. I don’t know if ATL will still be the world’s busiest airport. I don’t know what an airport will look like by then. I don’t even know whether they will recognize much of what surrounds us today. But I know what I hope they recognize in us. I hope they can see that we took care of what was handed to us. And I hope we left them something worthy of inheriting.
Someone will open that capsule in 2126 with something none of us has today: the benefit of knowing what came next. Then it will be their turn.
